


the ax(e)-files

by madrox (ramathorne), nni



Series: take twoniverse [3]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Alien Zer0, Anal Sex, Canon-Typical Violence, First Time, Frottage, Gun Kink, Hand Jobs, Heavy Drinking, M/M, Other, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:01:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23727985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ramathorne/pseuds/madrox, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nni/pseuds/nni
Summary: Axton is a pervert and Zer0's an enabler. Gaige christens Madame von Bartlesby a big fat bitch. Also included: Maya makes a new friend, and Krieg climbs Wilhelm like a jungle gym (uh, not like that, though).
Relationships: Axton/Zer0 (Borderlands)
Series: take twoniverse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1698136
Comments: 45
Kudos: 83





	1. Zer0 Sum

**Author's Note:**

> you thought we were done? krieg voice: YOU'RE WRONG!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Axton can't keep his eyes to himself. Maya can't drive stick. Zer0 just wants to know what the fuck is going on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ramathorne says: what's that? you uh, didn't want to read pilot from zer0's perspective? oh. :[  
> nni says: sorry for talking about axton blowing guns so much but also you're welcome

In Three Horn Valley, just outside of the newly revitalized Happy Pig Motel, Axton is looking at him again.

He's supposed to be watching Maya, and he must foolishly think that Zer0 doesn't notice, but Zer0 wears a helmet for this exact reason-- to watch when he knows he's _being_ watched. From where he's bent over his gun, his eyes focus in on the ex-soldier, on how his gaze flits back and forth from him to where their siren is struggling to learn how to drive a front-runner. He's obviously trying to look nonchalant, sprawled out artfully in his chair and tap-tapping away on his knee, but there is a furrow to his brow and the faintest tic in his jaw that he cannot conceal; not from someone who is trained to notice.

Zer0 doesn't pause in cleaning his disassembled sniper rifle, lest the skag is let out of the bag.

"Left foot clutch, Maya," Axton says, still looking at him from the corner of his eye. There's a distinct, unnerved rattle to his voice that Zer0 is quickly growing to associate with himself, and solely himself. His knowledge of human behavior and average way of life doesn't stretch far beyond what it takes to find one and put a bullet through their brain, but even with his limited understanding of how these bizarre creatures work, this one seems… different, when he is around Zer0. He doesn't react to the others in such a way.

"I _know_ that part," Maya says to Axton, frustration etched clear into her voice. "It's everything else after that confuses me. I don't keep my foot on the clutch when I go for the brake, right?"

"Yeah," Axton says, mind clearly occupied with other things. Zer0 wonders vaguely if he should correct them, but is distracted when Axton licks his lips, watching Zer0 wipe down the outside of the sniper's muzzle. He's struck vividly with the image of that pink tongue running alongside his old Maliwan's barrel-- the one Axton had gifted to him in return for what he is referring to in his mind as 'The Favor', and feels a strange itching underneath his chitin.

He's still not sure what to think of it, still not sure _what_ this feeling is. It's fascinating in a way entirely new to him, or perhaps just long forgotten, planting the seeds of burning curiosity deep in his belly.

He drags the cloth up over the gun's barrel once more, shallowly buffing out a small scuff along the side of it. Next to him, Axton inhales sharply, exhales slow, and that curiosity within Zer0 burns ever so slightly brighter.

He wants--

"--Whoa, _shit!"_ Maya snaps, and draws them both from their thoughts, it seems, as the frame of the light-runner lurches forward. "Axton!"

Axton blinks. "What?" he asks.

"Are you serious?" Maya retaliates, irritably. "Do I fucking keep my foot on the clutch when I brake or no?"

"Yeah? Of course."

"But you _just_ told me--"

Zer0 goes back to cleaning his gun, tuning out their argument until it's nothing but a drone of white noise. He doesn't dwell further on half-lidded hazel eyes or the dart of a pink tongue wetting chapped lips.

That's his plan, at least. Until they return to Sanctuary.

# \---

Considering his specific skill set, it makes sense, he supposes, that he should be the one to hunt down Axton once they're back-- though it's annoying that he has to be hunted down at all. What _doesn't_ make sense is how he finds him, sealed behind a laughably locked door and hunched over on the mattress.

At first, Zer0 is nonplussed, almost bemused by the fervent shouting for him to close the 'goddamn door'. He obliges, shutting the door behind him, paying no attention to the small, "I meant _get out,'_ that floats his way and instead approaches him, still intent on his mission to bring him downstairs to join the rest of them for dinner. Although he'll admit-- his piqued curiosity may present itself as a small ulterior motive.

' **LOL. WTF,** ' he tries mocking, at first, as though perhaps needling will lend itself to both causes. All it does is serve to make Axton more belligerent, scowling and cursing at him and _not budging._ It's as Axton finally complies, checking his ECHOcomm, and Zer0 surveys their surroundings-- the bolted door, the sheets drawn around Axton's waist, hand still buried between his legs beneath the covers-- that it occurs to him what exactly he might've been in the middle of to be so evasive and resistant. Even with his sparse information regarding this particular aspect of human nature, it all falls into place, now that he really thinks about it-- everything except for the absence of that dazed expression he's come to associate with Axton's unusual desires.

 _Oh,_ he thinks. _That's_ the vital piece missing from the picture.

He remembers now, Axton's face on that particular night, the lengthening shadows cutting sharp edges across his features, highlighting the dusky color on his cheeks and the way his brow had furrowed around his unfocused eyes, glassy smooth and hazed all at once. He remembers how pliant his form had been when the ground shook, willing and flexible in a way he hadn't quite seen out of the generally rigid mercenary, brought to his knees by the thought of dragging his pink, spit-slick lips across the barrel of--

"--A gun," he finally says. Axton looks up at him suspiciously from the ECHOcomm.

"What?" he drawls.

"You don't have a gun," Zer0 repeats, and after barely a moment's hesitation, presses his Maliwan to the commando's throat.

To his shock, Axton tries to pry his wrist away and he isn't sure how he's been misread, not in light of their other encounters to date. It catches him off guard. He presses Axton back against the pillows with a thinly veiled urgency, ellipses scrolling across his LED in an effort to get the other vault hunter to _wait_.

"The fuck, Zer0--?!" Axton snaps, an unspoken question lilting the edge of his sentence. Zer0 stills, then, unsure of how to proceed. How is he supposed to convey what it is he's looking to gain from this interaction when he isn't even sure of it himself? Knowledge? Gratification? The deep satisfaction of scratching the morbid itch of curiosity? After all, that's the answer he's looking to find as well.

The pad of his finger caresses the hollow of the trigger before pressing down once, lightly, then again with a bit more force, the charge of the pistol sparking to life. The soldier's nails catch and dig into the worn leather of his gloves, fighting what seems to be a struggle both internal and external, and Zer0 cocks his head left and slightly forward, drawn in like a magnet to the sight.

He moves the Maliwan up and over skin, blazing a trail of humming blue against Axton's lips, pressing until he gains entrance. Axton makes a noise, so soft and unlike him, that it nearly sends Zer0's head spinning. It takes every ounce of the focus he's so diligently carved into himself over the years to muster up a feeble "Continue," not even trusting himself to stick to his self-imposed pattern of haiku.

It's then, somewhere in the middle of it, that he can pinpoint the dawn of clarity in Axton's eyes. That tense, unwelcome undercurrent ebbing out just as the tide of a lovely pink flush washes in.

Zer0 is _fascinated._

There is a fine line, it seems, between peril and predilection-- for Axton, at any rate, and Zer0 can't help the odd swell of possessive pride he feels at having found the balance before any of the others. He, too, continues-- and for once in his life he feels displaced, as if he is a bystander pulling the strings of a marionette, watching his own body do things he's never felt the urge to do before, things that had never even crossed his mind.

He straddles Axton to get a better look, to watch as that pink flush deepens into something redder, a bright stain of blood beneath the skin. That _look_ of his is back again, half-lidded and blissed out, the one that sends Zer0's heartrate skipping. He feels a faint tug of pressure as Axton swallows lightly around the barrel of the pistol, and Zer0 growls with it, trying to banish this bizarre uncertainty in himself. If he can only unearth what makes Axton tick, dig until that mechanism is laid bare before him, he feels like maybe he can finally _understand_ what has him so at odds with himself ever since he'd granted him The Favor. That maybe if he sees this through til the end he will finally have the answer.

He tries to ask Axton why, and is answered with a question of his own. "What's _your_ game?" Axton asks, but Zer0 can't offer answers that he himself does not possess. There is no game he's playing. He just wants to figure out _why_. To find the point in all of this.

The commando squirms beneath him. "You told me to--" here, his breath hitches, and Zer0 burns a little brighter, "--to fuck off last night."

Zer0 shakes his head slowly. "I'd asked, 'Are you done?' / Evidently, you were not." / _And neither was I,_ he adds, silently.

Axton, it appears, is either expertly evading the question or is genuinely too preoccupied attempting to swallow the barrel of the gun. It's compelling, this oral fixation of his, and Zer0 angles his head for a better vantage. Curiosity overrides equanimity, sliding his finger off the trigger and watching in spellbound fascination as his hand guides the pistol in, the muzzle slowly disappearing into the tunnel of Axton's throat. The man chokes at the same time his hips roll up under the blanket, eyes glazing over slightly, and Zer0 feels his disquiet grow bolder, clawing at the edges of his mind.

He's losing control of himself, overcome with some sort of impulse, and the notion of losing composure to some unknown force is rattling. His patience wears thin at the thought, wasting time on something that's bringing him no closer to what he really wants to know. Axton sputters as he draws the pistol out again-- a single question racing through his mind that he'll need his mouth to answer.

"What _now,"_ the commando gripes, irritation tingeing his voice around the rasp of his strained throat.

Zer0 pauses momentarily, contemplating the most direct way to get an answer out of Axton's addled brain. "Would you beg for it?" he asks, at last. If he just got the commando to concede, maybe his curiosity would finally be sated.

The ex-soldier snorts, softly. "I don't beg, sweetheart. But I'd like to see you try and make me."

Which is… not what he'd expected, but it's something that turns in his stomach, both familiar and foreign; something that he can _work_ with. A challenge, one could even call it. He relishes in the thought that this might be his chance, that he might finally get to see the soldier well and truly defeated; undone in a way he never knew possible, all by his hand. Newly invigorated, Zer0 surges forward to pin Axton to the pillows making the other curse his name, low and throaty.

He's jostled, minutely, by the desperate motion of Axton's hips, and that is what truly fans the flame back to life. His head turns to watch behind him, a flash of unsteadiness quavering through his own hands as he sees Axton's working below a burgeoning patch of dampness blooming through the fabric of the sheet. The commando must catch him looking (it certainly wouldn't have been difficult) because he manages to twist free of the sheets, revealing both Axton's cock and the fingers inside him.

While he's _aware_ of people's more basal urges, it's the first time he's ever seen anything like this, and he isn't sure what to make of it. It's so simple, yet so enthralling; he can't bring himself to look away. He watches as the palm of Axton's hand slides over the newly visible head of his cock, and somehow Zer0 is even more captivated by the shallow, halting noise it draws from him.

When he finally does pry his gaze back up to Axton's face, he looks as frantic and on the verge of something as Zer0 feels, and it sparks an idea. He hauls him in close by the fist in his shirt, and with the other, plants the pistol right up against the base of his cock, finger easing down on the trigger as it hums to life.

"Ahh-- _fuck!"_

Zer0 feels Axton's moaning reverberate through him, like a shock wave up his fingertips and down to his toes, and he thrills. That feeling of losing control winds tight around his core, squeezing and shifting his insides in a way he's slowly beginning to identify as… pleasant. It coils tighter when he feels Axton grip around the muzzle in tandem with another groan shaking beneath him, and he presses his own knees slightly harder into the mattress.

"Can you come like this?" he asks, genuine curiosity coloring his tone, riveted by Axton's surprising correlation of violence and sex.

 _"Fuck,"_ Axton repeats, an ardent hiss of a word.

"I'll take that as a yes," Zer0 says, breathless. The bright red LED of his HUD blinks " **LOL** " at the blatant, obvious response.

"S-suck my dick," Axton stutters. He must think that Zer0 is mocking him, which, while amusing, is entirely off the mark. The commando bows upward then, chest glancing against Zer0's own, and he feels something wild thrum through him at that for a fleeting moment, before Axton is shuddering hard enough that Zer0 feels it rock him almost off-kilter.

He drops Axton back against the mattress, springing a little as he clambers off of him, legs threatening to shake when he stands and finds his balance-- an unsettling discovery. The pistol is a disgrace, he sees, dripping white and tacky, and he wipes the barrel on the stained sheets, somehow managing to salvage it enough to keep for now.

The ex-soldier scoffs. "What, not a cuddler?" he snarks, but Zer0 can't be bothered with something so asinine, not when there is so much else to consider. When he looks Axton over, there's a peculiar enchantment to the way he's so disheveled-- a strange allure that propels him out the door, unwilling to leave himself open to the need for more self-exploration than what he's already allowed himself to succumb to.

There is still a strange sort of unrest roiling within him, a petty urge for _something_ he can't quite put his finger on. He lies to the party waiting for them at Moxxi's in order to give him more time to think, to try and compress the thoughts clouding his brain into something manageable, definable-- into something other than the sheen of sweat beading on Axton's upper lip or the high flush from his cheekbones all the way down to his neck.

He shakes the thought from his head the best he can-- for the moment, anyway. His pride still demands an answer to all this, but it's something, he thinks, best suited for pondering in the long Pandoran hours alone, not at a noisy table full of nosy people.

"--I'm gonna kill him. I'm really gonna do it this time," the siren announces to the table at large as Zer0 reclaims his seat-- something to do with the string of messages he hasn't bothered to check, most likely-- which does well enough to drag him from his dangerously wandering thoughts.

Gaige crosses her arms, leaning back into the booth seat. "Okay? But, uh, serious talk here: your jumpsuit really is kinda weirdly sexy, especially for something designed by suuuuper repressed monks."

Salvador makes a choked off hooting noise, reminiscent of a nomad set on fire. Then he guffaws. Maya's lips become a thin, white line as she too, folds her arms and sinks back into her seat.

Zer0 decides that maybe there are some things he's better off not knowing.


	2. Wetwired

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tiny Tina gets her date. The writers forget that Bartlesby is not actually the same size as Vermivorous. Salvador, as usual, fucks everything up in the best way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ramathorne says: do you have anything to say about this chapter, nni?  
> nni says: just crumpets, man

For a while, after their first real night in the city, things seem to happen in a rapidfire sequence of events. They _do_ meet the Firehawk, an unwilling leader of a cult. They _do_ rescue Roland, the leader of the Crimson Raiders, from the Bloodshots-- all with a terrifying efficiency Zer0 is begrudgingly impressed by, having only ever worked solo all his life up to this point. He’s finding teamwork surprisingly fun, and refreshingly distracting. It affords him the opportunity to pour his energy into the relatively simple tasks of hunting, of covering his allies, of coordinating their efforts into one unstoppable unit, rather than trying to navigate their complex social waters-- particularly the parts with the ex-Dahl soldier and all their recent history lurking in the depths.

After another brief stint in Sanctuary, it’s time to move on and get to work yet again. They meet up with Roland’s spy and collect his intel regarding the Hyperion train, the one with the key to the Vault supposedly hidden among its cargo. Their next move, so the Crimson Commander says, is to recruit the help of his friend and foremost demolitions expert-- someone named “Tina.”

Roland forewarns them that Tina is.. strange.

Zer0 is no stranger to strange. He’s traversed parts of the galaxy most people would never even know existed, seen things many of them couldn’t begin to conjure up in the farthest reaches of their imagination. Even so, Pandora has to be among the strangest of places his profession has taken him. An entire planet held captive by a celestial corporate workstation. A Vault. More mutations, he thinks, than indigenous species. And now, an adroit little girl, barely more than a toddler in his eyes, offering up a mastery of the art of demolitions beyond the scope of what most people can achieve in an entire lifetime.

To say he had been skeptical about her proficiency at first would be a bit of an understatement. While detonating a bandit had made quite the first impression, it’s still reasonable, Zer0 thinks, to have had his doubts.

It’s only now-- now that they’ve cleared a camp of bandits and procured the explosives in question-- that he starts to think maybe this “Roland” hadn’t steered them wrong after all. He has a bit of time on the journey back between the ruins of the bandit outpost and Tina’s grotto to inspect the missile in more detail, and what he sees-- outwardly, at least-- is fascinating.

It’s crude but so is everything on Pandora, and the childlike illustrations and graffiti do nothing to detract from the surprising amount of skill he sees buried deftly in its seams, settling in the balance of it. If anything, it’s more impressive that she can make something of this caliber-- something almost _artful,_ under these conditions. Zer0 runs a hand down the side of the missile, entranced by how much destruction is concealed inside it-- and notices that Axton is watching him.

It’s the first time Zer0’s caught him staring openly since their encounter in Sanctuary. He pauses, for a moment, displays that bold “ **0** ,” and strokes alongside the explosive once more. Just to see what happens.

Axton nearly walks into the blinking bomb just outside of Tina’s workshop.

 _Curious_ , Zer0 thinks, and finds himself alight with a newfound vigor.

# \---

They’re finally handing off the “badonkadonks” when Tina says, “Now I knowww you guys gotta big important savey-the-world job to do, but I was wonderin’ if you could help me with one teensy weensy lil’ flava. ...Okay,” she amends, “Two flavas. Sorta three flavors. I’m havin a tea party, you see, and I _need_ crumpets. And a date. And I am NOT going stag, don’t even suggest it!” 

“...Crumpets?” Maya asks, with a face like she’s just eaten week old skag pizza.

“Crumpets,” Tina affirms, her voice low and sure.

“Uh,” Axton interjects, “a date?”

“With Sir Reginald, yes. You gon’ hafta pick him up for me-- his mother, the not-so-great Madame Von Bartlesby--” here Tina sniffs, dramatically, “-- we are no longer on speaking terms.”

“Sorry, I’m still stuck on crumpets,” Maya says.

“ _Crumpets_ ,” Tina asserts, “are delicious.” The blazing intensity in her thousand yard stare keeps most of the crew from asking any more questions on that front.

Except for Maya, who remains nonplussed.

“Right, and this is all so important… why, exactly?”

Tina, somehow, manages to sigh and groan all at once, in that special way Zer0 is learning only teenage girls know how. “UuuUUGHHhh, okay arright, okay. Lookie here, pretty lady. Do you want my famous-- nono, my Infamous expertisism on big ass BOMBS or nah? ‘Cos you ain’t gonna get that shizzie set up unless you follow my complete and utter destructions. I mean instructions. Same diff.”

“Um…” Maya says, uncertain. “Yes?”

“Then I’ll help you once you put your pedal to your metal and nab me them crumpies and my date, ‘kay?” Tina says, not so sweetly. “Now, shoo! Get! Go go go! It’s my NAP time.”

And with that, she collapses onto her cot, completely crashed.

They leave Tina to her “business,” and find their way back outside the bunker.

“Really though?” Maya asks, once they’re safely out of earshot. “We’re really doing this?”

In their heads, their guardian angel says, “Oh.. help the poor girl. She just wants a tea party,” and for a computer, she sounds so forlorn. Zer0 looks to Gaige, who is usually the first to cave to her whims, and sure enough the mechromancer’s lower lip is trembling.

“Fine,” Maya sighs. “The train isn’t going to be here for a while, anyway. Sal and I will go get the crumpets,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Are you sure you’ll be able to handle getting Tina’s date?”

Axton snorts dismissively. “Don’t you worry, Maya. Madame Von Bartlesby ain’t gonna know what hit her.”

# \---

As it turns out, “--Madame Von Bartlesby is a big fat BITCH,” Gaige howls.

“Watch your damn mouth,” Axton says, but from his sniping perch along the edge of their precarious platform Zer0 is inclined to agree with the girl. Madame Von Bartlesby is the biggest bitch on all of Pandora, full of spitting acid, dive bombing minions, and, by grace of Axton, “--Why isn’t she dead yet, why is she not dead, Zer0!”

Zer0 clicks in irritation, activating the ECHOcomm. “The bitch in question, / comfortably hovering, / will not fucking land.”

“Can’t you do like,” and here Axton does something peculiar with his arms, as if trying to mime a sword while shooting down several exploding bug missiles. He looks somewhat like an idiot. “I don’t know, some acrobatic assassin crap? Jump like ten feet in the air and stab her in the ass?”

Zer0 doesn’t bother dignifying that with a response, he knows his silence will speak volumes for him. _Are you fucking joking?_ it deadpans, all without really putting in the effort.

Axton seems to get the hint, if his nettled tone is anything to go by. “Right,” he says, then. “Of course. What was I thinkin’, asking the guy who stabbed two dudes together like a friggin’ kebab on top of a moving train for any other superhuman feats he might be able to pull out of his ass.”

“Why don’t you ever ping Zee for language?” Gaige whines, doing a perilous amount of nothing. Through the sight of his sniper rifle Zer0’s focused on covering Axton-- who, judging from his expression, spots a bug bomber hurtling towards her. He makes an aborted motion towards his still charging turret, but it’s no matter-- when Zer0 next looks up from his scope he sees Gaige’s Deathtrap snap up the offending living missile into its claws and shred it to bits.

“Because I don’t have to watch his ass for him!” Axton snaps, and for once Zer0 agrees. “Would it kill you to contribute instead of complain?”

He watches Gaige stick her tongue out childishly at Axton and shoot straight at the ground. The bullet ricochets into another varkid zooming towards them with a faint _pwing_ , leaving it to shriek and skitter off course, shriveling uselessly in the air.

Zer0 is actually impressed by that.

“I’m _contributing,”_ she says, haughtily. 

“And I’m not having a goddamn sass off with a seventeen-year-old in the middle of a firefight,” Axton mutters into the ECHOcomm under his breath. “I am not.”

“Yes you are!” 

“Just fucking get her to land so we can leave and I’ll never have to look at one more--” BLAM, goes Axton’s shotgun, “--goddamn--” BLAM, “-- bug! Ever!”

Zer0 has to lower his scope again as he watches Axton fire shot after shot into the onslaught of Bartlesby’s minions. For all his idiotic pantomiming, there’s something strangely beautiful and vicious in the way that the commando whips around with his Jakobs, the splattering varkid guts disrupting his stark profile in shimmering ribbons of gore.

“Yeah!” Axton yells, blatantly reveling in the violence. “You like that, you cockstain pissgnats?! Die! DIE!”

His teeth are bared again. It leaves Zer0... intrigued.

“Language,” Gaige needles-- and then suppresses a scream as Zer0 narrowly saves her from bombardment by sniping another bug missile out of the air. “Whoops! Thanks, Zer0!” 

“Pay attention or I’ll switch you to decaf for the rest of your life,” Axton threatens.

Gaige looks stunned, affronted, and horrified all at once. “Don’t even joke about that,” she says, as if she isn’t mercilessly sticking the bayonet of her gun down the throat of a stray varkid.

“THEN HELP ME GROUND MADAME VON GODDAMN BARTLESBY,” the commando roars, “AND STOP GIVIN’ ME LIP!”

# \---

One broken turret and three empty rifles later, Gaige says, “I think we’re just making her mad.”

Zer0 watches as Axton hands her another ammo stock. “Shut up,” he says.

# \---

“--Yeah, we’re definitely just making her mad,” Gaige confirms, and while Axton himself seems hard-pressed to agree, his cache of ammunition (or lack thereof) certainly isn’t. Zer0 sighs and feeds the last of his sniper ammo into his magazine, trying not to think about how much they’re all going to have to pay Marcus later. That fat man sure knows how to make a wallet weep.

“She can’t hover forever,” Axton protests desperately.

Gaige snorts in disbelief, muttering, “Can’t hover forever, he says, for the fifth goddamn time.” Her gun clicks then, the magazine empty, and she throws it down in disgust. “You know what I fuckin’ want? Lasers. Just, tons of fucking lasers. Hey, Maya--” she says, with her finger pressed to her ECHOcomm, “-- you think lasers would work on Madame Von Bitch?”

Through their earpieces there’s the tinny sound of an explosion-- one that matches suspiciously well with the faint burst of orange and green light erupting from the distant buzzard camp. Two seconds later, through the crackle of the communicator, Maya asks, “Madame _who?”_

“Von _Bitch_ ,” Gaige repeats, with venom.

“Madame’s carapace,” Zer0 chimes in, “surely would not hold up to / the fiery death.”

“Or the shocky death,” Gaige growls, "or the fucking corrosive, or the anything better than the shit guns we have right now!”

“The guns we _had_ ,” Axton corrects, grimly pocketing his now empty pistol. “And watch your damn mouth!”

“Watch your fucking face!”

“You guys sound like you’re having fun,” Maya remarks, dryly. “Do you need backup?”

“UGHH,” Gaige groans. “Sorely.”

“I’m a little… preoccupied right now,” Maya says, “but I’m sure Sal would love to help you.”

As if on cue, Salvador bellows, “WATCH THIS!”

It’s impossible to say what draws Zer0’s attention away from their own battle. Maybe it’s the roar of the buzzard above, breaking his concentration. Maybe it’s the cocksure way Salvador had assumed that they would be able to see what unpredictable thing he’d do next from literal kilometers away. But most likely it’s the way Axton looks up, as if somehow sensing something is wrong, and that’s when both of them catch the glint of shiny metal cascading through the sky just to their right.

“CATCH THAT, PENDEJO!” Salvador whoops.

The gun hangs there, flipping over itself in midair as it begins its slow descent back to Pandora. Even from this distance they can hear the scream from the pilot of the incoming buzzard, the one about to make a head-on collision with Salvador’s Tediore, and within a split second there’s a faint _skrakk_ and a louder _kaPOW_ as the gun bounces into one of its engines, sending the pod into a fit of explosions and veering sharply port-side. The engine that explodes, by some sort of miracle, goes careening through the air and slams straight into Madame Von Bartlesby.

She descends with a shrieking cry, and Zer0 seizes his opportunity.

He can see the perfect line of trajectory, like it’s been there waiting for him, for this moment, for his “acrobatic assassin crap.” He’s in motion before the deafening roar of the exploding buzzard has stopped ringing in their ears, bounding off towards a nest, run dry of her share of the pests. A ridge just above one of the openings serves beautifully as a foothold, a brief, secure point of contact before he springs off the face of it, using his momentum to flip himself high and fast in the direction of the bitch, as Gaige would say.

It’s an easy path through the air, up up and directly over the hulking insect. He grapples on, wrapping his legs around her middle and squeezing just enough to hold himself there while his holoblade blinks to life, right at the base of what is, presumably, her neck. There’s a high, desperate shriek and a warm spray of blood in the split second before he feels it sever and give altogether, her head leaving her body as they both plummet back down to the tundra.

“Oh, _shit,_ ” he hears Axton say, in that strange tone of voice he’s learning to associate with the sudden, rosy rush of red to his cheeks, and then, a bit louder, “Oh SHIT,” which he thinks he’ll start associating with crash landings, especially ones headed directly for him. The commando scrambles for cover, diving down into the snow.

Zer0, on the other hand, had planned to separate himself as soon as he had beheaded the beast, but he finds his calf tangled with the gangly legs of her right side, and the best he can do is tuck and roll as Bartlesby’s corpse hits the ground with a thunderous rumble, missing Axton by mere inches.

“YES!” Gaige cheers, throwing her gun hand up in the air, wobbling backwards and falling on her ass a few meters to their right. “Dude, take that, Von BITCH!”

The ground quavers.

“That was so badass, Zee, you fuckin’, you fuckin’ just took her head right off! You sliced her open like an ingrown pimple! You--”

It shakes.

“Gaige, get back!” Axton shouts.

The shelf of ice and rock beneath them splits with a crack like a gunshot, and Zer0 feels the weightless tug of gravity hit him once more as the cliff slides, dragging himself, Axton, and the late Madame with it tumbling into the abyss below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, quick poll: does anyone actually like the firehawk questline? is there more to it than just endless, backtracking suffering?


	3. Ascension

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gaige can't stop saying 'okay'. Axton can't stop saying 'fuck'. For the sake of science, Zer0 decides to act on impulse for once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ramathorne says: i'm sorry  
> nni says: sorry to you and also my parents

It's dark, when Zer0 comes to. Not pitch black, but enough to make him uneasy. He doesn't quite groan when he sits up, activating the color night vision on his helmet, but he does feel his joints scream in protest and the beginnings of a wet, seeping gash along his left side. He prods at it with fascination; he can't remember the last time he'd ever been injured taking down a target. It’s nothing life threatening, but a trip to one of Zed’s med machines might be in order when they return.

"--Fuck," the commando groans off to Zer0's right, and digs his tomahawk into a stray varkid crawling from the nest that had cradled their fall. A nasty one, at that-- it had been no short distance from Von Bartlesby's perch to the crevasse in which they now find themselves. "Oh goddammit," he reiterates, letting his head fall back against the rubble, and as Zer0 rises to his feet, he can't help but feel his eyes curiously drawn to the bending column of Axton's throat.

"Holy _shit_ are you guys OKAY?!" he hears Gaige squeal from above, muffled through the icy barrier between them. She sounds panicked, he thinks.

Axton groans again, wincing as he pushes himself up onto his elbows. He has no _serious_ injuries, from what Zer0 can tell at first glance, but even he's sore after that fall. "Peachy," Axton affirms, squinting in the dim light. "But we might ah… might need a little extra muscle to get outta here though."

The static of the communicator crackles to life. "Axton, what's going on?" Maya asks.

Axton grimaces, and puts a hand to his ear, presumably switching to the frequency that Tiny Tina can access. "Tango down--"

Maya interrupts, "English, G.I. Joe--"

"-- _Bartlesby_ down," Axton corrects himself, looking annoyed, and hisses when Tina whoops loudly in his ear. "She took us with her though, me and Zer0 are stuck in some kinda cave-nest thing underground." He pulls out the ECHOcomm, sending their coordinates back to Tina. "Look familiar?"

"Ooh," she says, sympathetic. "I know where you at dawg, those were Madame's old stomping grounds before she moved up to her tippy-top penthouse ss _suite."_ She emphasizes the 'suite'. "There's a way out doh! I got lost inn'ere once when I was playin' hide and seek with some rats. Just follow up on this here," there's a faint _ping,_ and Zer0 notes that both his and Axton's communicators have been updated with a new waypoint blinking somewhere to the north of them. "And wham-bam, you escape, man! Dawg! Home slice. ...Might needa rope though. I gots you. One-a y'all come on back with Sir Reginald and we can do an old fashioned swapparoonie."

"Okay," Gaige says. She still sounds panicked. "Okay. Okay. You guys are okay? I can't stop saying okay. I'm gonna stop now. Okay. FUCK! I'm gonna, I'm gonna get the rope. Don't die before I get back, okay?"

"Jesus, just go get the friggin' rope, Gaige," Axton says, his face muffled by his arms.

Always one to have the last word, Gaige snips, " _Fine,_ I'm going! Look, watch-- watch my little blinky guy walk away from you assholes. Who I shouldn't even _care_ about, apparently!" And lo and behold, the angry pounding of little teenage feet on the ground upside syncs perfectily with her retreat on the GPS display.

There's a pause.

"You're still cool, Zee," Gaige says, into the communicator.

"Thank you," Zer0 purrs.

"Oh, come on!" Axton gripes. He pulls his hands away from his face, presumably to push himself up. But when the ex-soldier still fails to do anything other than lie there on his back, watching the precarious ceiling and fretting over a scrape across his forearm, Zer0 takes it upon himself to cross the sparse distance the cave has afforded between them, offering a hand to bring him to his feet.

Almost too quickly, Axton accepts, hauling himself upright with a solid grasp on Zer0's forearm.

"Thanks," he says, and Zer0 pauses, thinks about flashing him a smiley face, and then decides against it. It's amusing watching Axton squirm in his silences, and the commando does just that, his cocky grin faltering and that _look_ flickering in his eyes.

"Uh," he mumbles, and tries to pull his arm away. Zer0 doesn't let go, and Axton stares down at where they're joined, brow furrowed.

"You, ah, just wanted to get me alone, didn't you," he quips uncertainly, as if he's trying to make a joke, and that's when Zer0 fully realizes that they are, in fact, completely alone. A quick glance down at his ECHOcomm confirms Gaige's location still heading away from them, toward where the others should be.

There's not another soul in sight. No more varkids, no nosy teammates, no Hyperion intelligence bearing down on them. Just Zer0 and this frustratingly confusing man he wants to do _gun_ things to, things that make Zer0 feel like he's been stretched out and laid to dry.

After a brief moment of consideration, his finger clicks on the mute function.

Axton opens his mouth again to say something likely asinine, he thinks, but it doesn't quite make it out before Zer0 materializes a small gun from his stash and holds it idly against his hip, letting go of Axton's arm in the process. The commando stiffens then, stance ready and checking all sides for Zer0's presumed target-- but after failing to find the danger he turns back to him, uneasy and full of trepidation.

"What's--?"

Zero takes a step forward at the same time Axton steps back.

"Whoa whoa," he says, his eyes wide and his hands up, as if about to defend himself. His gaze darts between Zer0's helmet and the pistol, eyebrows furrowed like he's trying to puzzle it out and the answer is taunting him just below the surface.

Zer0 finds himself growing irritated. For someone so gifted with on-the-fly tactical prowess, Axton really is turning out to be kind of horrible at reading these kinds of situations.

He closes the short space between them, crowding Axton up against the cavern wall, and despite his apprehension he goes willingly, pressed up against the rock with Zer0 bracketing his hips. That _look_ of his is back again, tempering Zer0's patience, setting something ablaze within his chest. He reaches up to Axton's ear, switching off his communicator, and waits for the crystallizing realization to dawn on Axton's face.

"...What," Axton finally croaks, as if he's lost his voice. The pink of his tongue darts out to swipe at the corner of his lip. "You wanna-- here? _N_ _ow?"_

"Bullseye, commando." Zer0 confirms. With deliberation, he clicks the safety off the pistol, caressing the trigger of it, and watches Axton's eyes follow his fingers with thinly veiled hunger. He looks peculiarly like a man who's just won a round of Truxican roulette-- equal parts terrified and elated.

"Well?" Zer0 prompts. "What are you waiting for?"

The commando's hand moves towards Zer0's wrist-- hesitating for a moment as though he's unsure of his next move, or maybe searching for his nerve. He finds it apparently, as he grips Zer0's hand and drags it in a slow sweep up his own chest, settling the muzzle against the side of his head and leaning into it, letting it brush his temple in an almost reverent gesture that stirs something deep in Zer0's belly.

"There, wasn't that easy?" Zer0 murmurs. He clicks the hammer back, watches how the sound of it sends a shudder through Axton's body. Axton, in turn, reaches straight for his cock, palming himself through his pants as Zer0 slides the pistol to the divot of his collarbones, just under his goggles.

"Fuck yeah," Axton breathes, his half-lidded gaze still leveled on the black of Zer0's helmet. There's something uncomfortably intimate about the way his eyes are so intently focused on the screen; as though he's somehow, impossibly, looking straight _through_ the glossy, opaque fiberglass to Zer0 himself. He finds himself reaching for some sort of distraction, anything to get Axton to avert his gaze, to avoid thinking too long about how it worms its way through him-- and before he knows it he's covering the other's hand with his own, feeling the twitch of his cock growing fuller and pulling toward his stomach even through his gloves. 

Axton does break eye contact then, grunting and hastily fumbling with the fly of his pants, cursing when the zipper catches once, twice, before finally giving way. Zer0 tries to remove his hand to give the other vault hunter some room, but Axton shakes his head, catching him around the meat of his palm and pulling him back towards his newly freed cock.

Zer0 almost falters-- he's never touched someone else like this before-- but instinctively his hand squeezes around the strange firmness of Axton with fascination; so soft and vulnerable, yet still solid and exposed like so many other parts of him. Axton's breath stutters, a sound caught in his throat, and _that_ won't do, so he squeezes again, trying to remember the patterns Axton's own hand had followed as he'd watched not all that long ago. He drags up, rounding his hand over the tip.

 _"Fuck,"_ Axton finally blurts out, like the word has been punched from his gut, and doubles over a little, gripping hard at Zer0's shoulder for purchase. "Where the hell did you learn that?" he asks, a lilt to his voice that shoots up Zer0's spine. In answer, he swipes over the head again and presses the pad of his thumb to the underside of it, brushing small strokes as Axton shudders bodily against him.

This power is exhilarating, even more so than he's anticipated, he thinks. He's bewitched by every tick, every shiver and flex and twitch that he manages to draw out of him. By how the simple act of touch could shake someone apart so completely; it's astounding, and intoxicating.

His hand moves almost of its own accord this time as he's lost in thought, gliding down to the base while the other drags the mouth of the pistol up from the hollow of Axton's throat, across his neck and over his jaw to rest against his temple. Axton's breath hitches before he moans, the sound vibrating through Zer0's helmet from this close. He leans into the pistol, with enough force that Zer0 wonders if it might leave a mark-- if not for the short, soft hair cushioning its bite.

"Glove's a little rough," Axton rasps, but his voice is coarse and weak, breaking around the edges. A sharp flash of intrigue flares briefly within him, to know what the skin there might feel like pressed against his palm without the barrier of his leather gloves between them. _It's better this way for now,_ the more logical part of him cuts in. There's still so much neither of them really know about each other. 

At the thought of knowing so little, Zer0 hums in frustration, takes it out in a tight squeeze and another quick stroke to Axton's cock, and the soldier's hips, to his surprise, stutter forward through the circle of his fist. "S-shit," Axton stammers, as if he's caught himself off guard as well. Something in Zer0 thrills, his finger tensing on the trigger of the gun.

"You should do that again," he suggests, adrenaline drowning out his self-restraint.

"You--wha?" Axton asks, blinking dazedly up at him as his chest heaves white plumes of air. Zer0 growls quietly, irritable about having to explain himself in the thick of things.

"Move your hips again," he begins slowly, making sure that Axton understands. "Like before. Can you do that?"

Axton blinks at him again, and Zer0 can all but see the gears turning through the haze. Then, miraculously, his hips roll forward again, through the ring of Zer0's fingers, and that urgency burns through him once more. "Very good," he praises. "Keep going."

To his relief, Axton does just that, groaning softly at the encouragement. Zer0 tightens his grip just so, and his hips falter forward a few more times before finding their rhythm. Slow, at first-- like he's testing the waters, or perhaps just prolonging the inevitable-- then a little faster, more sure of himself. The two of them are bent forward, Axton's forehead brushing against the edge of Zer0's helmet-- both of them entranced by the sight of Axton thrusting in and out. The human huffs, shivering in the cold-- and leans a little harder against Zer0's helm.

"D'you--" he starts, and then clears his throat, his tongue gliding over his chapping lips once more. The hand anchored to Zer0's shoulder flexes once, then slides experimentally down his bicep. "Do you want…?"

He trails off, and it's infuriating, because Zer0 for once in his life barely knows _what_ he wants, just that he does, in fact, want it like he's wanted hardly anything before. He's always taken such pride in being so in tune with himself that this sudden unknown variable has thrown him off his game.

In the absence of an answer, while he's lost in his own head-- the steady beat of Axton's low moans in time with the pounding of his hips against his fist the only things truly keeping him grounded-- Axton's hand begins trailing slowly down his arm. He grips at the crook of it before sliding his fingers over the material of Zer0's body suit, right over the wound, making Zer0 flinch and hiss.

"Fuck," Axton swears, and rips his hand away. "Sorry--"

"--It's fine," Zer0 grinds out. In spite of the minor pain he feels himself growing more and more agitated the longer Axton's hands keep their distance. "Continue."

The commando pauses, if only for a moment, before resettling both of his hands around Zer0's narrow waistline. Zer0 lets himself be pulled forward, drawn by the tug of Axton's hands around him, and his whole body tenses as he feels the brush of Axton's cock against his own hardness in the suit. 

Suddenly, his thoughts are torn between the pressing need to push Axton further back against the wall, commanding him to do it again, and scrabbling to figure out when exactly it was that his own cock had sprung to rapt attention. A soft, gutted noise startles out of him as his knees buckle, pinning Axton even more soundly between himself and the sheetrock.

"Holy shit," Axton breathes, like he can't quite believe it either. "Good?"

Zer0 doesn't dare open his mouth, lest another one of those _noises_ slip out of him. Instead he takes the pistol and carefully presses it to the hollow of the other's jaw in response.

"You're the boss," Axton says, grinning breathlessly. He wraps his palms more securely around Zer0's waist and rolls their hips together. Sparks flare brilliant behind Zer0's eyes, burning through his nerves at the contact, and this time he pushes back, carefully grinding the head of his own cock against Axton's.

The commando groans, low and throaty. "Mm-- yeah, that's good," he rumbles, answering his own question.

"Yes," Zer0 agrees, almost thoughtlessly. _Not enough, though,_ a strange part of his brain disputes. He's not sure what he expected-- that contact would quell the frantic _thing_ thrumming through him, maybe. Instead, every part of him seems to ignite, an all but vital consuming _need_ burning through his core with no way to quench the fire.

He wants to keep his hand on Axton but necessity puts it to more practical use, steadying himself against the wall as the other vault hunter surges their hips together. Zer0 shudders, propping his helm against Axton's temple, the harsh rhythm of their breathing echoing throughout their narrow, caved-in chamber. He cants his hips upwards as the same time Axton rolls down, drawing a soft groan from Axton's lips. The sound of it pulls at his nerves, a taut line of tension from the soles of his feet to the base of his neck, tightening his fist around the pistol and nudging it further into the space below Axton's chin, tilting his head with the lean of the muzzle.

"Fuck, Zer0," Axton says, in that way of his that only serves to burn him even brighter, so dazzling that for a brief moment all he sees is static white. "Make a guy think you've done this before."

He isn't sure if he's meant to respond to that, and even if he is he has no idea how, so he doesn't. Because Axton's hit the nail on the head, thrown the truth into sharp relief: Zer0 _hasn't_ done this before. He's never wanted to, never craved the closeness of someone else. He doesn't know what's so different about Axton other than he _is._ He thinks of Axton on the battlefield, savage and fierce and full of a confident sort of vigor; he looks down at those hazel eyes, the flushed face, the bead of sweat trickling down one of his cheekbones, and that _thing_ flares inside of him again, fills him with an unfamiliar hunger.

Part of him wants to tame that, to possess that ferocity as his own, to see it quake and shiver underneath his palm from the mere touch of it. To know that _he's_ the reason when it shakes apart, undone. The other part of him can't get enough of this roiling friction between their hips, or the way Axton seems to be clinging to him as if his life depends on it.

"Jesus, Zer0, are you bleeding?" Axton says, voice strained, his fingers digging grooves into the kevlar. Distantly, the Zer0 on some higher plane of existence thinks he might feel the wound at his side open up again, a dampness at the tear in his suit, but his body is too rooted to the present, to the dull pressure of Axton's fingers and the mesmerizingly addictive grind of their hips to really care. He bears down harder, faster, and revels in the noises Axton makes-- almost like a wounded thing trying to catch its breath. 

The sweat is beading at the top of his lip again, and Zer0 is punched by the urge to taste it. He growls, and settles for swiping it away with his thumb instead, leaning heavy on the cavern wall to accommodate the shift in balance. Axton tilts his head, up and back, just enough to catch the pad of Zer0’s thumb between his lips and press his tongue there against the worn leather. 

Zer0, on an instinct that surprises even himself, shoves it in to the knuckle. The way Axton moans around it vibrates down through him, straight to the base of his cock, and Zer0 makes that noise again, the one beyond his control. The straining line of tension in him snaps, severing in two in strange reminiscence of the savage end of Madame Von Bartlesby-- and with that thought he's off like a gunshot.

 _BANG!_ goes the pistol in his hand, jerked away from Axton's throat at the very last second. The bullet cracks through the dried out husk of a varkid nest above them and sends crumbling dusty bits of it raining down.

"Holy _shit,"_ Axton might be saying, but it's hard to tell with the tinny ringing in his ears, the aftermath of the deafening burst of the gun in such close quarters. Zer0's hand flexes compulsively, knees weakening as he grips the front of the commando's shirt for purchase. The gun falls from his grasp as he rides out his climax, a wet rush of warmth pooling in the groin of his suit.

The world slowly comes swimming into focus, the sharp chiming fading out, replaced by the rapidfire clicking of what he thinks is an empty magazine. Except, he realizes, it's coming from his own traitorous throat.

"Are you--"

He's relatively certain the next words out of Axton's mouth are going to be, 'are you okay?' and he doesn't want to hear it. Still shaken, unable to stop himself, he grabs around the commando's throat with his right hand and squeezes in threat. Axton's words die out, half-choked-- the bite of his dogtags digging into Zer0's endocuticle.

Instead of protesting, Axton nearly _whines_ at that, breaking the sound off with a harsh swallow as his hand reaches desperately for his own dick again, squeezing at the base and dragging the head over the faint wet patch at the front of Zer0's suit. Zer0 flinches, oversensitive, and Axton's cock twitches against him.

"Fuck," he curses, his voice thick and thready at the same time. "Fuck, you actually came." His pace increases double time, punishingly quick, a blur of a fist as he bucks hard against the crook of Zer0's hip. Come splatters in ropes along the crotch of Zer0's pants a few seconds later, thick and sticky-white, stark against the black kevlar and accompanied by this _noise_ , low and broken and right against the flat of his ear.

The commando goes boneless against Zer0 for a brief moment, clutching at the hand wrapped around his neck like some sort of lifeline, the high, flushed color washing out of his face as he takes in breath after shuddering breath. Zer0 is no less winded, finally understanding why it had taken Axton so long to recover that time he'd been sent to retrieve him for dinner. 

Part of him wonders if he'd have received the same sort of treatment as now, had he stayed. He finds himself annoyed at the wasted opportunity.

"Fuck," Axton says again, his voice still thick. He laughs, dazed, as Zer0 unlocks his fingers one by one away from his throat. "You're a mess, bro."

Zer0 looks down, consternated. He is, indeed, a mess, covered in both his and Axton's ejaculate. He's relatively certain that walking around like that, with it painted on him, is a social taboo.

"Here," Axton offers, and reaches into one of his many pockets to procure a handkerchief, handing it off to him. Zer0 accepts, carefully wiping away the traces. His pants are still sticky on the inside, but, while unpleasant, it's still manageable.

"You can uh, keep that." Axton says, tucking himself back into his pants and brushing bits of varkid nest out of his hair. Zer0 watches him, curious, out of the corner of his eyes, but does so, tucking the cloth away into his own pocket. Is he supposed to say thank you? He's not sure.

There's that silence between them, again. Even Zer0 can tell it's awkward, but he can't put his finger on why. He tilts his head at Axton, who looks as if he's struggling to say something. He opens his mouth, seems to think better of it, and shuts it again, running a hand through his sweaty hair.

"Welp," he says instead, gesturing towards the northern cave's corridor. "Badass assassins first."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ramathorne, with dawning realization: nni, we really just... we really did just write a lot of porn, didn't we?  
> nni: buddy, we sure did.


	4. Tunguska

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zer0 contemplates his life a little bit. Maya makes that new friend we were talking about. Salvador does too, in the form of a brand new concussion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ramathorne says: one day i'll be able to respond to a comment again without spontaneously combusting. that being said: thank you for having a look. it warms our cold black drunken hearts  
> nni says: this is the abs half. no, you don't get context for that.

It’s a long, chilly trek back to the surface. Zer0 squeezes past a rock and suddenly remembers the wound in his side, irritably ignoring the ache of it. He hears Axton say something into his communicator, curse when he realizes it’s still muted, and try again, though he’s too preoccupied to really hear what the other is saying. Between the tear at his side and sifting through the reality of what just happened-- what he somehow keeps _instigating_ \-- he’s got plenty to keep his mind busy.

He can’t help to recall the old adage of “fool me once, shame on you.” Although, within the context of their current situation, he supposes it’s more along the lines of ruin me once, shame on you. Ruin me twice, shame on me. Ruin me three times, and Zer0’s reasonably certain this quantifies as something potentially dangerous. He runs through a quick mental checklist in an attempt to organize his thoughts.

  1. For some vexing reason that he can’t quite place his finger on, he seems to value the attention of the commando over that of the rest of their makeshift team.
  2. Forming attachments is not something he makes a habit of doing, and is certainly not conducive to his line of work.
  3. He thinks that whatever they’ve been doing with each other might be considered sex.



_Especially now_ , he thinks to himself, the inside of his suit still tacky.

Which begs the question, what does that _mean_ _?_ He knows, in a literal, physical sense, but in a more more abstract, interpersonal way, it feels like one small piece slotting into place in a very large puzzle. It leaves him wondering if--

“--Hey, have you even heard anything I’ve been saying?” Axton says, stopping so short that Zer0 almost collides with him in the narrow passage. Zer0 curses silently-- had he really gotten that lost inside his own head? When did Axton even get ahead of him? Dangerous may be an understatement, if he’s already letting the situation get to him like this. 

“No,” he clips out, suddenly irritated with himself. He can’t remember ever having been this fazed by anything before. It’s... disconcerting.

“Wow,” Axton teases, clicking the mute momentarily. “First no cuddling, now no afterglow?” he tsks, and clicks the ECHOcomm back on. “Yeah, Gaige, I see the rope now.” 

Zer0 belatedly looks up through one of the chasms. There is indeed a rope dangling from the overhanging wall, just ahead.

“Okay, cool!” Gaige chirps, waving from high above. “I mean, fuck-- roger roger! Ten-four! Whatever it is you army bros say.”

 _Army bros_ , Axton mouths, looking distinctly offended and uncomfortable. He glances askance at Zer0 for a brief moment in the dim light filtering down from the surface. “Wait here,” he says. “I’ll go up first and pull you, yeah?”

Zer0 finds himself bemused. “What for?”

Axton gives him a strange look. “Uh, for your side, dude.”

Zer0 hopes he looks decidedly unimpressed at being called “dude,” but he’s surprised that Axton had remembered at all. “‘Tis but a flesh wound. / I’m fine, thank you very--”

“Nope!” Axton interrupts, and grabs the rope, hauling himself up towards the exit, where Gaige peers curiously over the edge. “No friggin’ haiku’s gonna save you. I’m pullin’ you up.” 

“Why are you pulling him, now?” Gaige asks.

“‘Cause this stubborn ass hurt himself on the way down,” Axton says, hanging halfway. Zer0 is trying to feel agitated, but can’t stop staring at the flex of his forearms or the twist of his waist. The commando looks down to him, winks once, and then shimmies the rest of the way up. It absolutely does not make Zer0’s stomach flutter.

“Aww, Zee! Don’t you worry, me and Deathtrap will pull you right up.”

“Yeah, _Zee_ ,” Axton quips, clearly showing off with the way he vaults backwards onto the ledge. “We’ll take care’a you so don’t you worry your shiny little head.”

Zer0 heaves a sigh and hides the wince that comes with it, grabbing onto the rope. He thinks about how not even a week ago he would have slit Axton’s throat for so much as looking at him the wrong way, and wonders how far he’s fallen.

“So where’s Sal and Maya at?” he hears Axton ask from above. Zer0 tugs twice to signal that he’s ready.

“What, you didn’t hear them?” Gaige hums thoughtfully. “I think Sal said he and Tina are putting together the teapot. Maya said she finally got the rest of the crumpets, but that was, like, _ages_ ago-- hasn’t checked in since. I don’t know where she’s at.”

“It’s Maya,” Axton says. Zer0 imagines he’s shrugging one shoulder in that way he seems to do, but the commando remains hidden somewhere over the edge, so he can’t be certain. “I’m sure she just took one of her ‘detours’.”

“Still sore about when she drove you guys halfway past Ellie’s garage without listening to your directions?”

“Ten-four,” Axton confirms, perhaps a bit tetchily, and helps Zer0 up to his feet with one strong haul. “Arright, c’mon,” he says, grinning lopsidedly. “Let’s get you to a med machine and find Sal, huh?”

Reluctantly, Zer0 agrees.

“Yeah, let’s get you patched up!" Gaige chimes in. “Deathtrap can give you a lift!”

“Absolutely not,” he says. He does have his limits. With that, he starts toward the vending machines he’d taken note of when they’d first entered, near the mouth of the tundra, Axton falling in line and Gaige trotting to catch up, pleading with him to let them try it just this once.

# \---

With Zer0’s wound reasonably patched and Tina’s second guest of honor (“Her name is PRINCESS FLUFFYBUTT,” Salvador insists, shaking the doll at them) safely procured, the crew collectively decides it’s in their best interest to wait for Maya to return. And she does return to them, after a while. In fact, she comes sauntering back with a psycho on her tail. 

It looms over her like a constant, pale shadow of death, and she says, like it’s the most mundane thing in the world, “Hey guys. I made a friend.”

“Holy hot a what.” Gaige says.

Axton grimaces. “Gaige, no,” he says, turning around-- then he stammers, “Wha, hah. Abs,” and turns a brilliant shade of red. At the sight of that color, usually reserved for him, Zer0 feels this twinge, a tic in the muscles of his shoulders that he can’t quite shake.

Maya smirks. “I knew you couldn’t resist a heaving six pack,” she jeers at Axton. “No boy with a face like yours is straight.”

Zer0 feels oddly threatened. He makes himself tear his gaze away from Axton’s shocked expression just in time to see Maya place a hand on her hip, cocking it to the side.

“Say hi, Krieg,” she says.

“SLAUGHTER THE CRESCENT TIPTOES,” Krieg says by way of greeting. Salvador’s face splits into a wide, toothy grin. He holsters his gun and slowly approaches the psycho, glee etched into every dimple of his face.

“You can’t just decide to bring a friggin’ psycho along, Maya,” Axton snaps. “What if it’s playing the long game? Make nice until we bring it back to civilization, then it just goes apeshit on the town?”

“Wow, what if _you’re_ playing the long game, making nice until we bring _you_ back to civilization and you just go apeshit?” Maya retaliates, clearly mocking him. “This one’s different. He saved my life, I think-- I think he needs our help.”

“Needs our _help_?” Axton says incredulously.

“He didn’t attack me or anything, just.. shouted some weird shit and killed off these gross-ass imp men that tried to ambush me. Something about a cockatiel in a rib-cage slaughter? I just…” She blows her breath out in frustration. “I just feel like this is important. He’s _different_ , look at him.”

“LOOK AT ME WHEN I’M KILLING YOU,” Krieg seems to agree.

“Oh, Ax was lookin’ alright,” Gaige titters, eyebrows waggling in Axton’s direction. Zer0 feels his hackles rise once more and he clicks, once, in disapproval. No one even spares him a glance, which, strangely enough, irks him. Usually he _prefers_ all eyes off of him.

Behind Maya, Salvador and Krieg seem to be sizing each other up; the gunzerker bending forward and pointing to his forehead. Krieg twitches to his head to the side once, twice, before rearing back and slamming their heads together. Salvador reels, roars, and then raucous laughter bellows out of him.

“I LIKE HIM!” Salvador says.

“Me too,” Gaige agrees, crossing her arms and nodding sagely. “You know. For anarchy reasons and all that.”

Zer0 refrains from voicing his input. He can already see how this will end and isn’t willing to vouch for a lost cause, even if that cause is Axton. _Especially_ if that lost cause is Axton-- because he isn’t playing favorites.

“W--hh--” Axton huffs. “Hey, computer lady, you hearing this? You really gonna let us bring along this psycho?”

“Um…” Angel says. “It could be… fun.” The word “fun” skitters off her sentence, as if she’s reluctant to agree. “Yes-- bring him along. The siren is right-- he seems important.”

Maya throws her hands up in triumph. Axton balks. Zer0 finds himself agreeing with him, still feeling that peculiar irritation.

“Fine,” Axton snaps. “But there’s no way we can bring it back to Tina’s. She’d see that buzz axe and straight up murder Tiny over there,” he shuts his eyes, as if pained by his own ironic pun, “in a heartbeat. Why don’t you leave it here--” 

“ _He_ should be able to go wherever he wants--”

“ _You_ leave _him_ here, and if he’s a good dog who can,” he enunciates this next part, “ _follow orders_ , then we’ll _think_ about bringing him along.”

“I think he’ll follow orders better than you, dishonorable discharge,” she snipes back.

Gaige dramatically falls back into Deathtrap’s arms at Maya’s sick burn, fanning herself as she swoons.

“You are _not_ helping, Gaige!” Axton growls.

# \---

Sure enough, they do leave Krieg there by the vending machines. Tina is… volatile, of her own merit, and most of them agree that adding a hulking psycho to the mix is one variable too many. But when they come back from the tea party he’s still there, sitting on a pile of dead marauders-- tossing his buzz axe up and down in a steady rhythm, catching it about half the number of times it makes the journey back toward the ground.

“Well I’ll friggin’ be,” Axton says the closer they get. “He actually listened to you.”

“Told ya,” Maya brags, a little simpering. “Hey, Krieg!” 

Krieg drops his buzz axe, slowly turns to them from his throne of death, and asks, as calmly as he seems to be able to muster, “Why aren’t my fingers in someone’s eye sockets right now?”

“Haha,” Maya laughs. “We’ll-- we’ll get you some eye sockets, big guy.” She seems a lot less sure about her decision than before.

“Why aren’t my fingers in someone’s eye sockets right now?” Krieg mumbles, apparently to himself. And then, a little more aggressively, “WHY AREN’T MY FINGERS IN SOMEONE’S EYE SOCKETS RIGHT NOW?”

“Oh, he’s riding with _you_ on the way back,” Axton says, firmly.

“Will you shut up and get the badonkadonks ready?” Maya grouches.


	5. Chimera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Krieg does some Psycho Parkour. Gaige is a badass, but maybe too much of one. Axton just wants to go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ramathorne says: another short chapter, we know. thanks for sticking with us though-- i promise more axzer0 stuff will happen soon

Like most things on Pandora, the heist doesn't go exactly as planned. There's no Vault Key stashed away in the wreckage of the train, for starters, because of course there wouldn't be. Handsome Jack is, as painful as it is for Axton to admit, too smart to hand it to them on a Hyperion gold platter like that.

Instead, he's thoughtful enough to leave them a friggin' _terminator,_ apparently.

The… _guy?_ That steps out from the flaming wreckage of a train car is more metal than man, like some sick scientist (Zed, probably, Axton thinks somewhere in the back of his mind), popped him off at the waist and stuffed him in a loader bot's ribcage. It'd probably be cool if it wasn't so gross. And, you know, if he wasn't about to vaporize each and every one of them.

"Oh shit," Axton says, for what feels like the millionth time that day.

"Oh dear," says the pretty computer inside their brains. He kind of hopes she gets a virus.

Lilith and Roland are hollering in their ears, something about how this 'Wilhelm' nearly wiped out the last crew of vault hunters without so much as a dent to his undercarriage. To their credit, Axton believes every word. He even sees Zer0 take an uncertain step back-- that guy is all about shooting off weak points, and Jack's robo-reaper seems to have replaced every conceivable weak point with two tons of reinforced titanium.

"Maya?" Axton grits out, halfway to throwing down his turret. "You, ah, you think you can lift that guy?"

"Not a chance in hell," Maya says. She's got Gaige behind her, covering the mechromancer as well as she can with her skinny little body. Gaige, because she can't make things easy _ever,_ tries her best to peer around Maya's blockade, muttering excitedly to herself-- something about mecha-limbs and living the dream.

Roland yells for a retreat. All five of them freeze, stuck between fight-or-flight. Even Salvador is uncharacteristically quiet, sizing up the odds. Axton is struck with the vivid image of him trying to headbutt this giant robot fucker and getting his brains splattered all over Terminus Plateau.

"STAND THERE AND DIE," Wilhelm rumbles.

"PISS YELLOW BLOODSTUMPS HAVE NO PLACE DICTATING HOW MEATSTICKS GRIND THEIR BONES!" Krieg roars back.

Axton blinks. "What?"

"What," Zer0 says.

"WHAT?" Wilhelm says.

"ANARCHY!" Gaige cheers.

Surprising no one, and yet somehow everyone, Maya's plus one is the first to break the silence, flinging first his buzz axe, then himself, at the mandroid. The buzz axe goes singing through the air and straight into Wilhelm's still-meaty chest. Wilhelm roars, and Krieg bellows, climbing the hulking Hyperion like a jungle gym.

Everything kind of happens at once, from that point onwards. Salvador pulls out not one, but _two_ rocket launchers. Maya finds it in herself to hold _just_ Wilhelm's fleshy body in place so Krieg can leap from one limb to another. Axton throws down his turret and Zer0 vanishes with his corrosive sniper in hand. Gaige's Deathtrap begins firing its Laser of Doom™ as she whoops and starts pelting their target's feet with grenades.

It's kind of terrifying, actually, what they can accomplish when all five-- no, _six,_ he amends begrudgingly-- of them can afford to focus all their bloodthirsty energy on a single target. As Axton slaps down his turret and takes cover behind her shield, a sizzling green hole punches through Wilhelm's left leg, eating away at the joint 'til it's creaking and threatening to drop off at the slightest movement. He doesn't need to see Zer0 to _know_ that smarmy asshole is flashing that stupid smiley emote beneath his crystal clear camoflauge. Another stray bullet smashes into Wilhelm's glowy blue optic sensor, shattering the glass right out of his face, a few of the shards lodging around the socket as Wilhelm roars in pain.

"Gaige?" Axton yells, laying down cover fire. "Do something mechromancey!"

"Oh, I'm fuckin' ON IT!" Gaige jeers, already with her tools in hand. She darts around Deathtrap, dancing away from Wilhelm's swinging arm and attaching something to the base of his good leg. "Keep 'em busy, big guy!"

"GRIND GRIND GRIND!" Krieg shouts gleefully. He's reached his buzz axe and is wrapped around the towering power loader, hacking away at whatever he can reach, sending blood spurting like a geyser, hot and red and spattering across the snow. "KILL KILL KILL!"

Axton barely dodges Wilhelm's shuffle-step kick, cursing when the Hyperion sends his turret flying. He whips out a grenade. "Sal!"

"OYE, CABRÓN?!" Sal shouts.

"PULL!" Axton returns, and lobs his explosive in a parabola, aiming for Wilhelm's weakened leg joint. Salvador hoots, shoulders one of his rocket launchers, and _KABBLOW!_ shoots a nuke packing straight into the masher. The explosions send Krieg flying and Wilhelm plummeting backwards into the snow, cracking the ice beneath him and leaving him desperately clinging onto the edge.

"OH NO," Wilhelm says.

"Krieg!" Maya calls out. "Are you okay?"

"IT SUSTAINS ME!" Krieg reassures her, quickly rebounding to his feet.

To Wilhelm, Gaige chirps, "Uhh, get _PHUCKED,"_ and then hits the button on her fancy mechromancey remote. Wilhelm's body _explodes_ with electricity, crackling blue and singeing bright, amplified by the shallow pool of water he's landed in.

After a few heart-stopping seconds of violent shuddering, he goes still.

"Holy shit," Maya says.

"Holy _shit,"_ Roland breathes, still on the comm.

"Holy _SHIT!"_ Gaige crows, and doesn't even wait for Wilhelm's body to stop sizzling before she starts looting his corpse. "Did you fuckin' see that, Angel! We were like a well-oiled _machine,_ baby! We took that sonnovabitch down in twenty seconds flat! New high score!"

"Holy cra--er… well done," Angel chimes in on her screen of static. She sounds impressed-- almost relieved, if that's even possible.

By now Gaige is wrist deep in guts and wires, rummaging around for anything vaguely valuable (or even just interesting) to her weird, sciencey, teenage brain. She delves her hands even further, right into a solid chunk of torso and bot-crotch with a sick _squelch_. Axton's pretty sure he feels himself go absolutely green.

Gaige, on the other hand, couldn't look more fucking pleased with herself.

"AhahahaHA," she cackles, eyes sparkling and positively giddy. "Ooooh yeah, jackpot, ka-CHING!" She says, and holds a gore-crusted… cylinder… thing… high above her head. "This right here? This is the good stuff." She shakes it off before bringing it closer to her face and turning it over in her hands, inspecting it.

"Yes, Wilhelm's power core," Angel agrees. "My sensors are telling me it's one of a kind," She says, in that strange tone of hers. It makes something in the back of Axton's brain squirm.

"Mhm, mhm mhm," Gaige says, only half-listening from the look of it. "Never seen one like this before. You know what! I bet we could use this! That old dusty piece of crap we gave that guy back in Sanctuary, I bet it's almost dead now. But this? This could last-- I-- I don't even know! Months? _Years?_ God, I just wanna--" She breaks off, shaking it vigorously in both hands and speaking straight to it-- "I just wanna get inside you _so BAD."_

"Gaige!" Axton scolds. _Why is she like this,_ he wonders, _and why am I the only one that_ does _anything about it?_

"WHAT? I just wanna poke around all up in its insides!" she whines. "Tell me all~ your secrets, baby," she whispers to the core, petting down its side.

"Okay," Axton says, "I'm gonna puke." Somewhere behind him Maya makes a noise of agreement. "Gaige, clean that shit off if you're gonna _touch_ it, Jesus. Let's just-- let's get this thing back to the big dogs, alright?"

"A power core?" Roland says. "Yeah… We could use that. It's no Vault Key, but at least Sanctuary will be safe a little while longer."

Another voice joins the chatter-- one Axton had all but forgotten about in the chaos that has become their lives in the past… God, how _ever_ long it's been, he's lost track.

"Wa-how, bravo, high-five, sloooow clap." Handsome Jack patronizes, tinny through their earpieces. "You got the damn power core, didn't ya?"

"Fuck you," Axton says, on reflex.

"Yeah! Fuck you!" Gaige shouts in solidarity, ineffectually wiping down the bloody power core.

"Fuckass puta güey," Salvador rumbles, dangerously.

"Ah-ah, language." Handsome Jack tuts, and Axton can _hear_ the sneer that's gotta be plastered on his sleazy mask-bastard face. It's also a lot less cool when he says it. "Listen up: You've been warned. The kid gloves are coming off. Tighten up the big-boy pants, because things are gonna get really, really bad for you Vault Hunters." Crunch. "Augh, seriously, these pretzels _suck,"_ he adds, and then, in a much more menacing tone of voice, "Buh-bye."

"Pretzel crunching motherfucker," Axton mumbles under his breath.

Zer0 flickers back into view and hums, low and threatening in his throat. "Dry, tasteless pretzels / will be nothing compared to / the crunch of Jack's neck," he mutters, red **0** glaring bright and warning, and Axton knows that now is _really_ not the time for the tingle he feels trying to blossom in his stomach.

He's too tired for this shit, so he clears his throat instead-- turns toward the rest of the crew to avoid having to look Zer0 in the _anywhere._ "We should ah," he jerks his head in the general direction of where they left the car, "We should probably head back, yeah?" he announces to everyone, and no one in particular.

"Good call," Maya agrees, "for once." She rises to her feet from where she'd been wiping blood and oil away from a gash on Krieg's leg, dusting him off and nodding towards Sanctuary. "C'mon," she tells him, "Let's get you home." Axton is less shocked than he wants to be when Krieg actually follows obediently behind.

Slowly, they all start filtering after. Every day on this rock has been brutal, but this one, he thinks-- this is the one that really kicked his ass. He's sore and so exhausted he can feel it in his bones.

It's gonna be a long ride back to Sanctuary.


	6. Three of a Kind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Krieg beats Axton at poker. Salvador makes some muffins. Zer0 hangs out in the back, being kind of a creep.

When they finally roll through Sanctuary’s gates, Axton is maybe hoping to run into some kinda hero’s welcome for once in his life, but the city they arrive in is about as tired of this shit as they are. Even Gaige has passed out, clutched around Wilhelm’s old power core with her cheek plastered to its sticky outside.

“I’M HERE TO SHANK AND SMILE,” Krieg announces as they pull up out front.

“Yeah, big guy,” Maya says, sounding absolutely exhausted as she slowly unclenches her fingers from around the steering wheel. “All the smiles.”

“Did you _not_ hear the part about shanking,” Axton asks flatly. 

“He knows if he tries anything I can explode him with my mind,” Maya says, voice saccharine sweet. “He’s a good boy, right Krieg?”

“PRETTY LADY MAKES THE TASTIEST NIPPLE SALADS!” Krieg agrees, enthusiastically. He vaults out of the gunner’s seat, skittering his buzz axe down the side of the technical. The scraping startles Gaige, her cheek peeling free from the gore-shell of the power core with a faint _skrrrak._

“Ow,” she gripes, scrubbing her cheek on her shoulder.

“Up and at ‘em, killer,” Axton snarks, and reaches back to knock his knuckles lightly on her head. “We’re back.”

# \---

They’ve barely set foot inside the city before some low-level Raider tells them Roland is waiting and drags them off toward his balcony. No rest for the fuckin’ wicked, Axton guesses, even if rest is damn near all he wants right now.

“Where’s this power core you mentioned,” Roland says by way of greeting once they make their way to him. “Is this it?” he asks, and points toward the grimy core in Gaige’s hands.

She pats it proudly, ineffectually dusting off the top. “Yup yup, this pretty lil’ thing right here.”

Roland stares for a moment, brow furrowed. “It looks, um--”

“Oh yeah, this thing needs some good ol’ fashioned TLC before it’s functional again. I fried it six ways from a Sunday.” She squints, and then snaps her fingers. “Oh! You’re, uh, it’s covered in blood. I. I forgot about that part. Yeah, it looks about as pretty on the outside as it does on the inside right now.”

“But you can fix it, right?” Roland asks.

“Thank you, he means thank you,” Lilith corrects. “But, uh, you can though, yeah? Fix it?”

“Uhh, chyeah, I could absolutely fix it within a sleep cycle or two! Or three, depending on the ratio of sleep to cycle.” Gaige seems to consider something. She throws her hands forward, as if to emphatically dismiss it. “Ahh, nah. Two cycles, tops!”

“Good, uh.” Roland clears his throat, glancing at Lilith. “Thanks. Sorry. As always… we’re counting on you.”

Gaige puffs up a little at that, her eyes sparkling, almost like she’s never been counted on for anything in her life, ever.

Now that the important business is out of the way of their leader’s tunnel vision, Roland finally seems to notice their new friend, twitching in the background. His eyebrows go up, then down, then half and half. He opens his mouth.

“--Say hi, Krieg!” Maya interjects, hurriedly. “Krieg helped us take down Wilhelm.”

Krieg twitches again once, twice. “Hellooooo,” he growls menacingly.

Roland closes his mouth, looking rather perturbed. “You, ah. Okay.” He gives the psycho a hard look. “Thank you for… all your help?”

“I like my victims like I like my metal: screaming!” Krieg exclaims. To his credit, his decibel level seems much lower in front of the commander. 

There’s a pregnant silence, then. Axton coughs, trying to hide his laughter behind it and failing miserably. At least it seems like Roland is just as hesitant about _welcoming a goddamn psycho on board_ as he’d been.

“Uh, sure thing. ...You can leave now,” Roland says. “Keep that… keep an eye on him.”

“Yep,” Maya agrees, bobbing her head up and down and pushing Krieg out the door as he spins the head of his buzz axe, giggling maniacally. “Yeah. Yup. We’ll um-- bye,” she says as they shuffle out the door. 

Axton salutes Roland and Lilith, more out of habit than anything, and follows the others down the stairs.

“That went well,” he remarks to Maya.

“Don’t be a dick,” she snipes.

“I’m not being a dick,” Axton says, clearly being a dick.

“Hey, wait up!” Gaige calls, skidding around the corner and nearly teetering over the top step before catching her balance. “Don’t leave me alone with the emotionally constipated power couple!”

# \---

The time it takes for Gaige to get the power core back in working order is probably the closest Axton will ever get to that hero’s welcome he wants so badly. When the citizens catch wind of the new, sustainable power supply and how, with the help of these Vault Hunters they might actually stand a solid chance against Jack, Sanctuary slowly, but collectively-- loses its fucking mind.

It’s a quiet rumble, at first. Darting glances, hushed voices chasing them through the streets as they all veer off in their own separate directions. Gaige zooms off to Scooter’s yelling something about tools. Zer0 fades into nothing as he throws down the peace sign, leaving Salvador, Maya, Krieg, and himself to make a beeline for Moxxi’s, yearning for a hot meal and a stiff drink.

“Ughh,” Maya groans, not so much sliding into the booth as collapsing into it from a diagonal incline. “I’m sick of _trains.”_ She blows a lock of her bangs out of her face.

“I’m sick of bugs,” Axton agrees, already slumped over the table.

“I’m doin’ pretty okay!” Salvador chimes in, entirely too chipper for how drained Axton feels right now.

Krieg doesn’t sit, at first. Just until Maya smiles at him and pats the booth seat beside her, then he jerkily cramps his bulk into the seat. He looks kind of like a bullymong stuffed in a high chair the way his hulking frame looms in the booth.

“What can I get you, shugs?” Moxxi asks from the bar, leaning down just enough to display her cleavage.

“Something that gets the smell of robo-blood and seawater out of my nose,” Axton answers.

“Whatever doesn’t remind me of bubbling varkid,” Maya mutters, like the acrid taste of it is still on her tongue. 

“The blood that pours from the heart of darkness,” Krieg growls. He clenches and unclenches his fist from around his buzz axe.

Moxxi’s lip curls into a smirk. “Oh, I’ve got just the thing to satisfy all your needs,” she purrs, and sashays to the other end of the bar to riffle through her liquor.

“Sorry, r-robo-blood?” says a passerby, stopping in his tracks. “Did you say robo-blood?” He wrings his hands together nervously. “Are you.. the Vault Hunters?”

“What’s it to ya?” Axton grunts, eyeing him warily.

“You k-killed Wilhelm, yes?”

“Dead and frozen,” Maya affirms with a tired nod.

The nervous man’s mouth works soundlessly for a second before he finally gets a hold of himself, lips splitting into a shaking grin. “Y-you killed Wilhelm!”

“Wait,” says another, poking her head in through the entrance of the bar. “They killed Wilhelm?”

The distant rumble of whispers around them turns into a dull roar. _Wilhelm, Wilhelm, Wilhem._

“Good riddance,” groans a drunk, slumped over at the end of Moxxi’s bar. “That bastard killed my roommate.”

“He killed my skag!”

“He m-murdered my family,” Nervous Guy admits.

Axton pushes himself up into a more respectable position, a little bit less like a corpse splayed over the table. He’d be more uncomfortable with their new friend if it weren’t for the surprising amount of life shining just behind the man’s eyes. He looks… hopeful.

“L-let me buy you a drink,” he says. “No, t-two drinks!”

“If he’s buyin’,” the drunk one slurs, “I’ll take one.”

“Why not!” Nervous Guy says, grinning broadly now. “I mean, if they took down Wilhelm--”

“We might actually stand a chance!” Shy Girl finishes for him as she steps more fully into the bar, eyes sparkling with a strange combination of excitement and deadly determination.

Somehow, a couple of drinks turns into a round for the whole bar. One round turns to two, and two to three as patron after sloshed patron decides they want to join in the celebration, to be able to say they bought a drink for the _Vault Hunters,_ until Axton’s pretty sure he’ll never have to pay for another drink for the rest of his life. Or at least the rest of the week. Apparently Pandora _really_ hated Wilhelm. Or maybe they’ll just take any excuse they can find to drink themselves under the table. Both seems to be the most likely answer.

"Oh, fuck," Maya says, knocking one of her many, many shots over. She's got a whole pyramid of them stacked next to her, using her powers to carefully balance them, but her elbow hits a stray and the small glass goes spinning across the table. Krieg stops it with the blunt edge of his buzz axe, practically slamming it into the wood.

“WAR!” he shouts.

“No, we’re fucking playing poker, dude,” Axton says, shaking out the deck from where it’s drenched in bootleg vodka. He deals again, or at least tries to, if it weren’t for Salvador suddenly climbing over him? What the fuck.

“Sal,” he grunts, as the other man knees him directly in the gut, “fuck-- Sal, if you’re gonna cop a feel, buy me a drink first.” 

“OKAY!” Sal says, and takes one of Maya’s shots to place in front of him. “Got it special for you, cabrón,” he laughs, and pats Axton on the head as he clambers the rest of the way out of the booth.

“Hey!” Maya says, floating it back over to her.

“Oh, for-- where are you going?!” Axton asks Salvador. “It’s gonna be your turn!” 

Sal waves him off dismissively, seemingly looking around for something. “Nah nah nah, I’m bored! Too many numbers. Aha!” he says, and points vaguely to a spot at the back of the bar. “Go on without me, macho. I’mma get us somethin’ to eat, yeah?”

“Suit yourself,” Axton says, shrugging. He eyes Krieg, who looks a lot like a sucker in the face of poker. “Does he wanna play?” he questions Maya.

Maya scoffs. “Why don’t you ask _him?”_

“You’re no fun,” Axton says, wiping the cards off on his shirt before shuffling. “Take another shot ‘til you are.”

Maya looks offended. “I _am_ fun,” she argues, dropping the floating shot pointedly into her hand. “I can be fun!” 

“Oh yeah?” Axton challenges. “Take the shot.”

She scowls at him but knocks it back, shaking her head emphatically at the burn. “I’m more fun than you,” she coughs, “Mr.Organizes His Ammo Alphabetically By Manufacturer.”

“That’s how they do it in the military!” he protests. “Hey, abs, you want in?”

“See the numbers, taste the violence,” Krieg rumbles, menacingly. His eyes are intent on the cards still pressed up against Axton’s chest, which makes him. Feel pretty funny, actually. He clears his throat, settling a little further back in his seat and trying to play it off.

Of course, that would be when Zer0 slinks into the bar.

He strides in, sleek as always, and Axton is pretty sure they come as close to locking eyes as they can with Zer0’s helmet in the way. They stay like that for a long, weird moment, Krieg’s eyes still heatedly glued to where the cards are pressed against his chest, before Zer0 deliberately walks right past them, flashing a smiley emote to Maya-- and only Maya.

Which, okay. Sure.

“What crawled up his ass and died?” Axton grumbles when Zer0 takes a seat at the bar, finally shuffling the cards. Krieg follows the motions intently. He wishes it didn’t make him sweat a little bit.

Maya, because she is a dick, waves cheerily at Zer0 from across the room. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she chirps, with that smug smirk of hers playing across her face.

“Still no fun. Take another shot,” Axton grumps, and throws down the flop.

# \---

By the time Maya’s drunk her way through about half her pyramid, Axton thinks he might be cracking that icy exterior, just a bit.

“No. No no no,” she says, stifling a giggle. “No, there’s no way you guys dragged that Matchstick guy from Frostburn all the way to the Soaring Dragon on his own two feet. I’ve seen the way those little guys move, it would’ve taken for _ever._ You would have frozen to death if you walked at his pace.”

“We didn’t drag him,” Axton replies, trying to remain as dignified as he can when his brain is swimming in high quality liquor. “We carried him.”

“You did _what??”_

“Strapped ‘em to my chest just like a baby,” Axton says, gravely. “My most glorious moment to date, I think. Walkin’ around with a little man tied to my chest screaming for the Firehawk’s teat of flowing hot sauce.”

Maya fucking hoots. “Hot sauce!” she repeats, and laughs so hard she snorts, leaning heavy into Krieg’s side and sloshing the most recent colorful drink to find its way in front of her, shoulders shaking with it. Her face is soft, for once, eyes crinkling at the edges, her grin whole and genuine, and Axton is struck dumb with it-- unable to reconcile this Maya with the same sneering woman who snubbed his help back in Windshear Waste.

“Well I’ll be,” he ribs, and takes a drink to steel himself before he blurts out something stupid about how pretty she is. “I think we’ve finally unearthed the fun side of Maya.”

“Fuck off,” she says, and flips him the middle finger, but she’s still smiling. Axton grins back, tipsy and lopsided, infected by her good humor. He swears he feels something give between them then, the air melting into something light and easy for once. 

“AHAHAHAHAHAH,” Krieg booms, effectively ruining the moment. It startles the shit out of Axton, who would probably have jumped about half a foot in the air if banging both his knees on the underside of the table hadn’t stopped his momentum.

“Fuck,” he says emphatically, burying his face in his hands, which sends Maya into peals of renewed laughter.

“Ohhhh my god my abs,” she slurs, hand curled over her stomach as the last fit of it tapers out of her voice. “I’d say you caught Zer0’s attention, but he hasn’t stopped staring over here all night,” she sniffs, and nods toward where Zer0 is still perched on a stool at the bar, transfixed gaze boring holes into the side of Axton’s head. There’s a half empty glass of something in front of him and for the life of him Axton can’t figure out how the guy’s been drinking anything.

“So?” he says, aiming for casual as he clears his throat and drapes his arm over the back of the booth. The world wobbles in front of him-- he’s pretty sure Maya has a twin for a second there before he blinks her out of existence. Either Moxxi’s stash is better than he’d expected or he’s a few drinks deeper than he remembers.

“Sooo…” Maya draws out, tapping her knuckles on the table. Check. “What’d you do to piss him off this time?”

Axton snorts, throwing down a couple bucks. “This time?”

“Oh come on, you two’re always fuckin--”

“--Hey,” Axton tries to hush her, because phrasing, “not so loud--”

“--Fuckin’ staring at each other. You always got this look like,” she gestures wildly and incomprehensibly, deeply affecting her voice, “ ‘a-doyy, my name’s Axton, look how weirdly proportional my face is and stuff, I can’t shoot a sniper but I’ll blast you with a shotgun from ten paces away and make out with my turret when I think no one’s looking’--”

“Don’t you talk about Dahlia like that--”

“--And _he’s_ always in the back giving you that-- wait, you named it?”

Axton gestures for her to continue. Krieg, beside her, calls Axton’s bluff, dropping a couple of crumpled bills into the pile. “What’s Zer0 always giving me? Go on.”

She shakes her head like she’s trying to jiggle her thoughts back into place, setting her cards face down to fold. “Y’know, that murder look because you’re an idiot. Ergo--” she draws the word out with an almost posh spin, “--you had to have done _something_ to piss him off.”

He stares at her, his jaw working and arm still slung over the edge of the booth. His other hand comes up to scrub at his mouth, subconsciously aware of how Zer0’s head follows the motion from the other side of the room. Maya stares at him expectantly.

“I dunno,” he answers, after a while. “You really think I can read that guy?” He settles for an evasive kind of honesty, because he can’t trust his damn mouth sober let alone this deep in the hole.

Maya opens her mouth and holds out a finger-- thinks better of it and puts it down. She nods, once. “Thassfair,” she says, rather sincerely, patting Krieg carefully on the shoulder when he ends up having a better hand than Axton.

Axton slaps his cards on the table and reaches for another ginger sip of his drink. It bothers him more than he wants to admit-- that he can’t read Zer0, that is. Nobody on the whole friggin’ team can, he’s pretty sure, but it’d make his life a helluva lot easier right now if he could just get a damn read on the guy. He risks another glance over at him from the corner of his eye.

Zer0’s nursing something distinctly bright and cheery and half-orange-- completely at odds with the stiff set of his shoulders and signature black bodysuit-- tapping one of his long fingers on the counter. Axton swallows, feeling the ghost of them wrapped around his throat, and quickly looks away.

He’s pretty sure they made eye contact again, though. Damn it.

He’s never really been so unsure of where he stands with someone before. Even with Sarah, he still had a pretty good idea of what she was thinking right up til the bitter, messy end. But what is he supposed to think of a guy who barely spares him a second glance until they’re alone? Why does Zer0 always seem to keep his careful distance around the others? Is he ashamed of him or something? The very thought of it boggles Axton to the core. Not to toot his own horn, or anything, but he’s a pretty fuckin’ good looking guy, one that he knows from personal experience people would kill to get close to.

He may not be great at math, but something isn’t adding up. 

How _does_ he even begin to bring it up? “Hey, so I can’t help but notice you’ve had your hand on my dick once or twice now, you wanna grab a beer?” Yeah, that’d go over real smooth with the broody, standoffish assassin. It’s so frustrating that his easy charisma doesn’t seem to be working in his favor for once. What had he done differently before? How had he done it with Sarah?

“Hey, big shot,” Maya says, snapping her fingers in front of his face. “Dealer takes a drink, c’mon.”

For once, Axton does as he’s told. He drinks, and drinks, then drinks some more. Enough that he can _almost_ ignore the heat of Zer0’s gaze still bearing down on him.

“Attaboy,” Maya cheers him on, handing Krieg another one of the dirty margs they’ve got crowded in the corner of the table. He takes it with surprising daintiness, and then pours it straight into his mask.

Axton deals again.

# \---

By the time he looks up from the next hand, he’s starting to get sloppy. Maya had beaten him there by a mile-- although she does hold her liquor surprisingly well for being so damn tiny. And raised by monks.

She’s got her head pillowed on the table as she haphazardly throws out the flop. One of the cards flips over and lands in a shot glass. “Oops,” she says, and readjusts to lay flat on the table, snort-laughing once more. “You didn’t see nothin’,” she slurs.

“I sure didn’t see a thing!” Salvador agrees, appearing out of nowhere and holding a plate of… muffins? Axton’s head swivels to face the gunzerker, confusion etched into the lines of his face before his eyes fucking widen.

The muffins look… _normal,_ which is saying something for Pandoran cuisine. No weird rakk heads sticking out of the corners, no signs of claws or tails or motor oil-- just some fucking bland-ass looking muffins, presented in a surprisingly neat circle on a plate.

“Holy fuck, Sal,” he whispers. “Where did you get those?”

Sal shoots him a strange look. “I made them?” he says. “Duh.” He carefully sets the plate on top of a collection of shot glasses and takes one from the pile, grinning as he takes a bite.

“But _how,”_ Axton asks, reaching for one with awe, like they might disappear like dust clouds. To his shock, his hand closes around one. It’s solid as a brick, but it smells like real bread, and when Axton bites into it it’s the best thing he’s tasted since he stepped onto this godforsaken planet.

“Jesus,” he moans. “Jesus Christ.” He stuffs the rest of it in his mouth before Maya can make a grab for it. “Get your own,” he muffles out, pointing at the plate. She scowls at him and shuffles three into the crook of her arm, somehow managing to munch menacingly at him. Krieg plucks up one of his own, delicately holding it between two fingers and staring it down like it owes him money. 

Sal laughs, right from his belly, and claps Axton so hard on the shoulder that he almost spits out the deliciousness. “Eat up, fam!” he informs them. “I gotta ‘nother plate for Gaige, and I gave Zer0 his own.”

“Zer0 eats?” Maya asks, disbelievingly. Her mouth, also, is full of muffin. “I always kinda figured he’d just… photostyn-- photosymphon-- woah,” she says and swallows her mouthful, clearly too plastered for her five-dollar words. “Like, y’know. A plant. Or a robot. Like maybe that visor is a solar panel.”

Axton snorts softly, washing down his muffin with a swig of beer. “Oh, he ain’t a robot,” he mutters.

“Oh yeah?” Maya leers. “How do you know?”

“Because--” because I’ve felt his _dick,_ probably, Axton doesn’t say. “I just gotta feeling,” he grumbles, and suddenly even all the booze sloshing around his brain isn’t enough to drown out all those _thoughts_ he’s been drinking to avoid. Except now, undeniably past the point of tipsy, everything is even harder to process.

It shouldn’t bother him so much that Zer0 seems to be _intentionally_ avoiding him. He’s not exactly a stranger to one night stands, he knows the drill. Except, he’s pretty damn sure the whole point of one night stands is the _one night_ part. So why is it that if Zer0 can’t seem to wait to get his hands all up on him when they’re alone, he seems so hellbent on pretending that he doesn’t exist around other people? And if he’s gonna to to all that trouble, it might help sell the act if he would cool it with all the friggin’ _staring._ It makes Axton’s skin crawl, and he’s not a fan of the way he can’t tell whether that’s good or bad.

Is it weird that he kinda wishes his ex-wife was here? It’s probably-- no, it’s definitely weird. But she always knew exactly how to walk his dumb brain through things. She’d probably know exactly what to say. Or, maybe, she’d just deck him in the face for asking her advice on hooking up with some guy she doesn’t know and has never met. Honestly he’d… probably deserve it, for a few reasons.

God, he really did kinda fuck her over and she _still_ helped him escape. This whole time he’s had his head so far up his own ass he never bothered to thank her, never said he was sorry. He should tell her, he thinks, scrubbing a hand over his face. Yeah. _Yeah._ He’s gonna tell her. Maybe she’ll even help him out if he apologizes nice enough. He’s got a great face for apologizing with-- he knows from experience.

“Hey!” Maya shouts after him as he staggers out from the booth.

“Oi, puta madre güey!” Salvador adds irritably when Axton uses him as leverage to drag himself to his feet. He swats at Axton. Axton swats back ineffectually, stumbling fully to his feet.

“Where the hell are you going?!” Maya calls.

“I’m gonna call my ex-wife!” he yells over his shoulder, already making a break for the door.

The whole bar cheers for him and his dramatic exit--

Except for Maya, who he can still hear yelling about how she isn’t done beating his ass at poker as he pitches out onto the street. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> zer0, upon their return to sanctuary:  
> 


	7. Closure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zer0 tries to keep his distance. Moxxi distills some sage advice. Some no-name fuckers get to make out in the corner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ramathorne says, distinctly in the krieg voice: looooooove you

Zer0 had thought that in distancing himself from the others, in taking the time to clean the… _mess,_ he'd made, that he'd have cleared his mind as well. But cleaning himself only serves to dredge up stark recollections of the way Axton's cock had rubbed up against his own, or of his distracting mouth, or of the way his chipped nails dug into Zer0's suit like he couldn't let go. These thoughts cloud his head until he can think of nothing else, and he steps away from the sink, irritated with himself.

There's just something about Axton that seems to inhibit his capacity for higher thought every time they're alone together. As for why, he's still relatively certain that each encounter they've had is bringing him closer in his hunt for understanding just what it is that's drawing him to the commando. Unfortunately, the answers still dance just out of reach, looming on the horizon.

He's convinced that he can figure this out on his own. He just needs a little more time, and a little more observation-- from a safe, impartial distance. Giving himself that space, that chance to reset, might make it easier to sort the information he already has into something recognizable, something easier to compile into a thing he can understand.

As he steps back out of the Crimson Raiders' HQ, he resolves to keep the space between them, at least until he can properly analyze the emotions the commando provokes in him.

# \---

He hadn't considered that Axton might have already settled into his company for the evening.

By the time Zer0 has made his way to Moxxi's, he finds him grinning wide and warm and laughing, dealing a hand of cards to Maya and her psycho. It hadn't occurred to him that the commando might not be waiting for him, or that it would pluck a sour chord within him to not even be considered.

Axton notices him from across the way, stopping almost mid-sentence with their newest addition leering holes into his chest. Feeling strangely irate, he ignores the two of them and greets only Maya when he passes-- although he's a little irritated with her as well, for bringing in their new… ally.

He sits at the bar next to a sloppy looking drunk, and though he's not one for conversations he accepts several drinks from the bar's patrons-- each of them congratulating him on helping to kill the one known as Wilhelm. His fellow barmates come and go, including the sloppy drunk-- and soon enough it is just Zer0 sitting by his lonesome, nursing what someone had proudly proclaimed to him to be a Pandoran Sunrise. It's achingly sweet and orange and does nothing to improve his mood.

He stares through Axton and company, vexing over why such a mundane, docile scene seems like something he wants to suddenly be a part of. He is Zer0, the assassin-- a lone wolf of the galaxy-- but Axton smiles again from across the bar, a brilliant flash of incisors, sloppily inebriated and distinctly not directed at him, and Zer0 is troubled to find out that he is _bothered_ by that.

He can't help but let his mind be drawn to the way Axton had smiled at him earlier, with that sly wink as he'd shimmied his way up the rope. That unfamiliar anger flares in him again, and he douses it in a long pull of his drink.

Keeping his distance… _sucks,_ for lack of a better word. He hadn't taken into account that Axton might monopolize his attention even from the other side of the room. How is he supposed to sort through his newfound complications when he can barely focus?

There must be more liquor in the sunrise than he'd anticipated, because his senses are dulled to the point that he startles when Salvador seemingly materializes next to him with a plate of something that does not look as edible as he claims it to be. Zer0 manages to play off his sharp turn into something a little more casual, propping one elbow up on the bar counter as he twists to face their burly little man.

"What's that, Salvador?" he asks suspiciously, narrowing his eyes at the offering.

Salvador leers.

"Is lunch, esé," he says, looking at Zer0 in a way that feels uncomfortably _knowing._ He sets the plate on the counter with a soft clatter.

Zer0 picks absently at one of the muffins as another boisterous peal of laughter draws his gaze back over to where Axton has his face buried in his hands. There's that low tug of intrigue again as one of the commando's hands works over his mouth.

"...Sugar," Moxxi asks behind him, a particular lilt to her voice.

"No thank you," he replies distractedly, and irritably finds his attention drawn back to his present company at the sound of Salvador clearing his throat loudly over the general bustle of the bar. Moxxi, who's barely spoken a word to him all night, offers him a small smile, something he can't quite parse tucked into the gentle curl of her lips. He clicks in impatience, both with his own absentmindedness and with this continued invasion of his thoughts. "Um, what," he corrects, and tries to temper his voice into something more sure and neutral.

They’re both still _looking_ at him. Moxxi clears her throat as well. “You know,” she says mildly, in an unfamiliarly motherly manner-- maybe a tone she doesn’t often adopt outside of the limelight-- “you’re allowed to go over there. It wouldn’t kill you to talk to him, would it?”

Zer0 has never felt so transparent.

He is supposed to be an observer, not the _observed,_ and the realization of how far he's truly let his guard down sends something coldly defensive rippling through him. He sits up a little straighter, lets the full brunt of his height do the talking, but Moxxi appears unfazed. She is a small slip of a thing, but she straightens her shoulders and gives him a cool stare right back, unafraid.

Zer0 feels himself deflating. He takes another drink, slurping quietly when the last of his sunrise disappears up his straw, and holds the glass out for a refill. Moxxi takes it from him, as gentle as always, and in the same breath draws an icy growler of beer, seemingly from nowhere. She pours him the first glass and then sets both the pint and the pitcher on the counter.

"It's from those three," Moxxi says, nodding over to a nervous looking man, a not-so-shy girl, and that sloppy drunk from earlier. They're slumped together, drunkenly warbling a strange ditty about rakks in skirts.

He takes a long swig of the beer. It's much more palatable than the sunrise, so he takes another, one long pull at a time, until the glass is empty. Salvador whistles, seemingly impressed.

Moxxi gives Zer0 another wan smile. "You don't look the type to wanna talk about your feelings, sugar, but trust me when I say you've definitely got the sharpest eyes in the room. He's spent just as much of the night staring at you as you have at him, and you know it."

Zer0 doesn't reply. He knows, objectively, that Moxxi is right-- but for the life of him he cannot figure out why Axton has been looking at him, too. He's holding neither gun nor sword, so why would the commando be paying such close attention to him?

"--If I'm being honest," Moxxi continues, swirling a stray toothpick around a discarded martini glass, "It was kind of cute at first. But watching all this _pining_ is almost painful." Salvador makes a noise of agreement.

Zer0 bristles. He does not pine. "I'm not one to _pine,"_ he responds, and wishes he didn't sound so mulish. He pours himself another pint and sets to work on eliminating it.

The other two plates Salvador is still holding somehow stay miraculously balanced through the heavy shrug of his shoulders. "Then do somethin' about it," he says.

"You could do what I do, sugar," Moxxi supplies, almost thoughtfully, her eyes sliding towards Salvador. Their eyes meet and something strange seems to bloom around them, this odd aura of _knowing._ "Maybe you two should do the deed," she suggests. "Have a quick tumble-- get him out of your system. It could be the make or break of something new."

Zer0 hums noncommittally, his gaze flitting rapidly between the bartender and Axton. There does seem to be some gravity to her words, some sort of truth, but he can't quite seem to decipher what exactly she--

"Ohhh," Salvador booms, realization dawning in his eyes. He grins toothily. "Like fucking, no?"

Moxxi sighs and presses two delicate fingers to the bridge of her nose. "Yes, like fucking," she agrees, voice tired and heavy with exasperation. Whatever strange spell had fallen over them seems to have broken.

"Yeah vato, you should try that." Salvador says helpfully. "Make a quick fuck, no messin' around. Bam-- mystery gone!" He grins at Moxxi like they're on the same team. She merely raises an eyebrow.

"Why don't you give the other vault hunters a taste, Salvador," she says, nodding towards the plates still in his hands.

Salvador beams like the Pandoran sun before trudging back across the bar. Once it's just the two of them again, Moxxi turns back to Zer0 with that shrewd, scrutinizing gaze.

"Just think about it, sugar, that's all I ask," she tells him, and tosses him both a wink and a soft, smug smile before sauntering away with a flick of a dishrag to wipe down the other end of the counter.

 _Like fucking,_ Salvador's words echo in his head. _No messing around._ Is that all they've been doing? One of the few things he thought he'd truly _known_ about their situation was that they had, indeed, been fucking, but apparently they hadn't, according to these two. When Moxxi and Salvador had talked about it there seemed to be such a note of finality, of closure, which is all he really wants right now-- closure, so he can move on with his life.

Maybe Moxxi and Salvador are right-- maybe actually engaging in the act will finally scratch that curious itch and rid him of this uncertainty that's been plaguing him for weeks. It will be a relief when the _mystery_ is finally solved-- one small human should not be occupying this much space in his mind.

As if in direct rebuttal to that thought, the commando commands his attention once more from across the bar.

"I'm gonna call my ex-wife!" he shouts at Maya, staggering past the growler trio, who have moved on from their drunken ditties and into sloppily attempting to mash their mouths together. Axton is, as it would seem, headed straight for the exit at the side of the bar, stumbling his way into the mouth of the alley.

His… ex-wife?

Zer0 pours himself another pint, unfazed at this new information. It means nothing that Axton has an ex-wife, or that he still, apparently, is in contact with her. What happens between a man and his ex has nothing to do with him.

He has no stake nor interest in how poorly that conversation will undoubtedly turn out.

He downs the pint.

An ex-lover's quarrel doesn't interest him in the least.

…

Moxxi is looking at him again. Zer0 hunches further over the bar, sighs, and activates his holographic clone, slowly and invisibly getting up from his seat.

He almost startles when Moxxi says, "Bye, sugar," and then realizes she noticed him taking the growler with him.

Damn that observant woman.

# \---

Axton is surprisingly quick for a drunk. By the time Zer0 steps out into the alleyway, he's already out of sight. Zer0 perks a little at that-- he always revels in the thrill of a hunt, even if this one is a means to a different end, and nowhere near a challenge. The city has its share of nooks and crannies to lurk in, but it's child's play for someone of his caliber.

It doesn't take long, barely more than a quick duck and weave through the travel station and a peek behind the newsstand before he finds his target, wobbly and pounding his fist against one of the vending machines just inside the doorway of Zed's questionable med bay.

The machine beeps tersely at him, offended by the lack of payment for such rough treatment. Axton, in all his inebriated determination, keeps going.

"C'mon man, I'm just tryin' t'make a damn phone call!" he barks.

"Zed here-- z-z-z-z-zz-zzzzz-Zed here," the machine says back.

"ZED HANG UP, I'M CALLING SARAH," Axton argues with it, open palm slamming into Zed's face on the taunting red casing.

 _"Executing phaseshift. Dialing… Sarah,"_ it answers.

Axton and Zer0 both stare.

"Oh, for Pete's sake," Zed says. "Really?"

"Shut up Zed," Axton returns. There's that moment when a call connects, just before that faint _click_ of connection-- enough for Axton to bolt up and fix his hair like his ex-wife will see him on a _vending machine call._

"--Who is this?" a female voice demands. "This is a secured line, how did you get this number?"

"Holy shit," Axton breathes. "Sarah?"

There's a beat of silence. _"Axton?"_

Axton looks downright gobsmacked, of course, considering the situation, but there's something else lurking in the depths of his expression, something akin to when Zer0 had backed him up against that wall. It's a perfect cocktail of fear and elation, like he's the luckiest man on earth, and seeing it in relation to someone other than himself makes Zer0's stomach turn.

Before he knows what he's doing, he lunges for the vending machine, slamming his palm down on the touchpad with a sense of urgency. The call hangs up with a faint _bleep._

"What-- _JESUS."_ Axton startles as Zer0 barrels past him. "When the hell did you get-- this is supposed to be _PRIVATE."_

"Ain't very," warbles Zed's voice. He seems irritated. Zer0 will deal with it later.

"Don't call your ex-wife," Zer0 says, the words tumbling out before he can stop them. It's the kind of raw, instinctual reaction he thought he'd trained out of himself, and he startles a bit, too.

Axton gapes and blinks, looking more dumbfounded than Zer0 can ever seem to recall, which truly is a feat. And then, predictably, that shock morphs to anger.

"Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do?" he spits. "Whassit even to you, you no-faced, four-fingered, lanky-ass bastard?" A charming attempt to insult him, Zer0 supposes, but he'll have to do much better than that. Axton huffs a frustrated breath and tries to resume calling his ex-wife, banging hard on Zed's med machine. "Won't even spare me a goddamn hello and then barges in while I'm in the middle'a somethin' like he got shit to say-- Sarah? Hey, Sarah!"

"Oh god DAMMIT, vault hunters!" says the real Zed, bursting out from behind the partition of his one-room hospital. He bodily drags a protesting Axton away from the vending machine, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and tossing him in the direction of the fluid-stained surgical cot. "Now cut it out, y'all are givin' me a damn headache!"

He looks like he means to toss Zer0 as well if it weren’t for the menacing LED light of Zer0’s helmet and the solid foot of height he has over him. As it is, Zed huffs, running a bloody hand through his hair.

“Now y’all sleep it off,” he says sternly, heading out the door. “And get gone by the time I come back from Moxxi’s. I may not be a _‘real’_ doctor, but I ain’t no damn babysitter neither.”

Zer0 looks in the direction of Axton, who’s hunched over the cot, groaning and holding his head. He sounds as miserable as he looks, but even now Zer0 finds himself distracted by the curve of the soldier’s spine as he bends over.

Slowly, he crosses the distance between them. It’s not exactly what he’d planned, but he does have him alone now, after all.

“Stop right-- oh god,” Axton starts, and lurches forward a little, eyes squeezed tight against what Zer0 can only assume is an unfortunate bout of nausea. “Stop, alright? What the hell are you even _doing_ here? What is your _problem?”_

“I wish I knew,” Zer0’s mouth decides to say, before checking in with his self-preservation. Irritatedly, he clicks-- rubs the back of his neck and squeezes hard, trying to ground himself. He shifts from one foot to another as Axton slowly but surely turns himself around, bracing backwards onto the cot to glower at Zer0 with squinty, glazed eyes. The commando’s mouth opens, shapes around a neat little circle, and then closes.

Finally, he slurs, “You’re fff _fuckin’_ confusing, you know that?” 

Zer0 just shrugs, aggravated. He _knows,_ and it doesn’t sit well with him, but he’s no less confounded. Axton scoffs, leaning harder against the cot, as if trying to put some distance between himself and Zer0.

“What, d’you--” he gesticulates wildly between them. “You think somethin’s gonna happen, here? After you fuckin’, you-- ignore me, all night, pretending you don’t know me? What was that shit back there at the bar, dude?”

“Saw you were busy,” Zer0 bites out. “You, Maya, and the psycho--”

“Oh come off it with the friggin’ haikus, man--”

“--You were playing cards,” he finishes, just to be an asshole. He watches the way Axton breathes in, deep and slow and just this side of unsteady, and finds it difficult to focus on much of anything else. And then, drunk and begrudgingly acquiescent, he says, “I’ve been told it’s rude to interrupt.”

“Bullshit,” Axton snorts derisively. “Didn’t stop you just now, or much of ever,” he accuses. “So what was different that time, huh?”

There’s a moment where Zer0 pauses, flashes Axton a rolling ellipse as he tries to process all the implications packed into this conversation. Axton scoffs in return, irritated or maybe just impatient.

“The way you look at the psycho is… troubling,” Zer0 says, at last.

Axton blinks at him, the angry furrow of his brow softening into something more along the lines of perplexed. “Troubling,” he parrots, like hearing it from his own mouth might help him understand. “What-- whadd’you mean, _troubling?”_

Zer0 clicks, frustrated. “You look…” He doesn’t know how to explain it. Even sober he knows he struggles with the words to describe that look that graces Axton’s face.

In lieu of a verbal response he reaches up, slowly, his hand creeping towards the other hunter. Zer0 presses his hand against Axton’s chest, exhaling in time with him, and slowly presses him back against the cot. The lack of resistance he encounters emboldens him, a bit-- enough to let his fingers trail up Axton’s chest to settle just at the dip of his throat, thumb swiping along it in slow strokes.

“There,” he says, softly, when Axton’s face grows dark with that strange hunger. “Like that.”

Axton’s gaze flickers up from his chest to Zer0’s helmet. His eyes, always searching, lock onto Zer0’s own blurring vision, and they stay like that for a long time, what seems like ages.

The commando licks his lips once, dragging the bottom between his teeth before he speaks. “What you’re-- are you jealous?” His voice comes soft with an air of disbelief.

Zer0 clicks low in his throat. Jealousy, he is reasonably certain, is beneath him. An unnecessary emotion that serves no purpose, and so he has no room for it. It should be a laughable notion, so it’s unsettling that the very thought of it sends a small spike of panic through his core.

“Of course not,” he spits, perhaps a bit too quickly, and growls quietly at himself for letting the liquor and the heat of Axton’s words cloud his head again. His hand presses down a little harder against the flat of the commando’s chest, grounding, earning a choked-off grunt in response.

Axton’s hand comes up to encircle his wrist, scraggy fingernails digging into the kevlar of his suit. “Whassit then?” he challenges, still searching Zer0’s helmet as if he’ll find the answers lurking somewhere in all the bits and binary. “If you ain’t jealous, then what is it?”

If that isn’t the million dollar question.

“I just--” Zer0 breaks off, still frustrated and feeling irritatingly unlike himself, like he has some sort of illness plaguing him. But he just needs to get it out of his system, isn’t that what Moxxi had said? Is that really how it works? That a “quick tumble,” as she had so eloquently put it, could be the make or break of something?

Here and now, feeling so far removed from himself and with Axton staring straight through him, he thinks he might just want to break it.

The longer Axton looks the more he can feel something inside himself changing into something unfamiliar, something hot and cloying and entirely different from the persona he’s so carefully crafted. He doesn’t like it-- doesn’t like that it feels beyond his control. He’s supposed to be a perfectly tuned killing machine, not a roiling mess of feelings he can neither decipher nor identify. He should not be plagued with fleeting glances or lopsided smiles.

“Hellooo, Zer0,” Axton says, waving his free hand in front of his helmet. “You still in there, bro?”

Zer0 flexes his fingers, once, and lets himself slump to the floor beside the cot in spite of the commando’s surprise. His legs are too tired and his head too full of thoughts and liquor to stay completely upright.

“I have a proposition,” he says, somewhere against Axton’s knees.

Axton huffs an incredulous laugh. “You’re propis-- prompto-- _propositioning_ me?”

Zer0 pauses.

“Yes,” he answers simply. “I believe I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maya, staggering over to zer0's hologram: ZER0 WANNA PLAY CARDS  
> also maya: hand swipes right through the hologram  
> maya: FUCK


	8. Squeeze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zer0 has somewhat of an epiphany. Axton does too, in a different way. Together, they do the drunken deed. ...Yeah. That's pretty much it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ramathorne says: happy memorial day weekend, have some more porn

Axton lets go of Zer0’s wrist.

_ “What?”  _ he asks, stupidly.

“I’m propositioning you,” Zer0 reiterates, “for sex.”

He can just barely see the commando bury his face in his hands. He scrubs hard at his face, stretching the skin back as if to straighten himself out. “Fuck me,” he says. His voice is tinged with something strangely akin to disbelief.

“Yes,” Zer0 says, helmet knocking against one of the soldier’s knees, hand running up his leg. “I believe I suggested that.”

Axton moans out something that sounds suspiciously like “oh, my god,” and rolls gingerly onto his side. He kicks out-- Zer0 supposes it’s an attempt to dismissively shake him off, but his hand stubbornly wraps around Axton’s ankle, stroking slowly up the muscle of his calf.

“Stop that,” Axton growls. His brow furrows into a drunken approximation of stern resolve. “I’m trying to be  _ mad  _ here, you can’t just-- offering sex is  _ cheating,”  _ he gripes.

Zer0 clicks in response. “So you’re not averse to the idea.”

“That’s not the point!” he huffs, but Zer0 can feel the tension slowly unwinding where his palm is still curled around Axton’s leg, and he hums. “Just because you’ve  _ been  _ a dick all night doesn’t mean you can make up for it with the one in your pants.”

“What have I been a ‘dick’ about?” Zer0 questions, perhaps a bit petulant.

Axton scoffs. “Uhh, my  _ phone call?”  _ he spits, exaggerating the words. “The untablerated-- unadulting-- the  _ shitton  _ of staring? The  _ blatantly  _ ignoring me but giving Maya your stupid smiley face bullshit?”

He’s about to protest, but Axton hasn’t  _ falsely  _ accused him of anything. Everything he’s rattled off are, in fact, things Zer0 has done over the course of the night, intentions notwithstanding. He’s maybe beginning to realize that he may or may not have been the only one who thought themselves left out to dry. Was that the reason Axton had been looking back at him all night? Because he’d wanted Zer0’s company?

Zer0 feels strangely hot and cold all over. “I didn’t think you were unhappy with your drinking companions,” he says, almost sourly.

“Well,” Axton says, and he sounds suddenly sheepish. “I wasn’t gonna complain, but…”

He trails off. Zer0 knocks his helmet against the side of Axton’s calf, feeling oddly full of something indescribable, something brimming within him, threatening to spill over and out of his drunken mouth.

Axton had felt shunned as well.

“I’m,” he starts, and then bites the bullet. “I’m sorry.”

Axton is silent for a moment. “Yeah,” he says. “You better be fuckin’ sorry.”

“I am,” Zer0 grits out, like it’s taking every ounce of him to admit it, and not-quite-against-his-will drags his hand up Axton’s shin. He flexes his fingers against the other’s kneecap, squeezing gently. “Can we have sex  _ now?” _

Axton’s hands drag down his face again. One glazed over, reddened eye peeks out from the cracks in his fingers and focuses onto him.

“No takebacks?” he says, suspiciously.

“Me? I would never,” Zer0 replies somewhat playfully, although his blood is racing from more than just the sudden change in atmosphere, and part of him is a little offended that Axton even had to ask. He braces hard against the floor so he looks a little more dignified and a little less sprawled on his ass.

Axton stares at him, jaw working, until he mumbles, “Alright,” at final fucking last, nodding seemingly to himself. “Okay, yeah,” and Zer0 is equal parts oddly relieved and eager, thrumming with anticipation. If he were just a bit less sober he might throw his hands up in celebration-- as it is, they glide toward the waist of Axton’s pants, instead.

“Woah! Wowowoah, easy there, cowboy,” Axton says, and Zer0 tsks. “You got any lube?” he asks, and when Zer0’s unamused silence isn’t enough of an answer, fingers still sneaking beneath the hem of his pants, Axton bats his hands away. Zer0 lets the display of his helmet glow threatening red.

Axton’s eyes go wide in that enthralling way they do, but still he snaps, “No way in hell am I letting you fuck me dry,” and then sits up. Wobbles. Sits back up again. “Already learned that lesson the hard way. We need lube, killer-- maybe Zed has a stash?”

Zer0 clicks in irritation and rises to his feet, perfectly elegant and graceful-- never mind his iron grip on the cot or the way his head spins his vision black for a moment on the way up. “Just you wait,” he purrs, a little menacingly. “I’ll find the  _ lube.”  _

He carefully doesn’t stagger over to a haphazard array of medical supplies strewn across a counter, rummaging through with drunk precision. There’s a container of something promising that he picks up, holds close to his helmet for inspection, and discards with a clatter.

“Je-heezus,” Axton slurs as Zer0’s nimble fingers turn another aluminum tube over and over, investigating. “Need some help over there?”

“I can read you know,” Zer0 says, a little snippish, as he tosses yet another vial of some questionable substance into the depths of Zed’s facility. Because he  _ can,  _ he’s been reading English for a fair number of years now. He does not need the help of an ill-grammared, far-sighted human to find a simple, frustratingly-- there! He snatches up the surgical lubricant in triumph, and definitely does not almost slip on a congealed puddle of blood as he saunters back over to where Axton sits in wait. 

“Sometime tonight, maybe?” Axton groans, his head turned towards him but his voice sounding far away, ethereal; as if he were speaking to Zer0 through a distorted ECHO or far underwater. “Wanna be awake when you fuck me.”

Something in Zer0 clenches at that, high and thrilling. His head spins again, pleasantly this time, and he leans forward, one gloved hand boldly wrapping around the hard line of Axton’s outer thigh. There’s a warm, smug glow that burns through him at the sharp intake of breath it brings.

Haughtily, he says, “It has been gotten / the surgical lubricant. / Told you I’d find it.” 

There’s a moment in which Axton points out how stupidly he’d used “gotten,” but Zer0 is in no mood to entertain it. Now that Axton’s oh-so-precious lubricant has been procured, Zer0 finds himself growing rapidly more impatient to seize the opportunity he’s been given. He may never get this chance again-- not to go as far as Axton has promised him tonight-- and he won’t even consider letting it go to waste, not when he might finally be able to put this strange, itching compulsion behind him.

He climbs onto the cot, foolishly using Axton’s shoulder for support. They both topple over the edge; Axton yelps and Zer0 sticks a leg out to balance them both, but it’s too late. Everything whirls. Trails of color smudge over Zer0’s vision as they tumble hard into the wall.

Under him, Axton laments, thickly, “Oh god. I’m gonna puke.” 

“Puke after,” Zer0 proposes.

“Shut  _ up,”  _ Axton says, pushing Zer0 off of him. “Lube,” he demands in the short, clipped way that suggests he is losing the battle against his nausea.

Zer0 hands it to him wordlessly. As much as he enjoys their verbal sparring, there are more pressing matters to attend to.

“Just--” Axton mutters, carefully turning around on the cot. “Just gimme a minute. Get--” he flaps a hand in Zer0’s direction, “--get your clothes off while I--” he cuts off with a grunt, too focused or perhaps too embarrassed to say the words out loud.

On another, more sober night, Zer0 might’ve realized that this would be a good time to mention the slight, ah, dissimilarities in their anatomy. Unfortunately, his judgment seems to be clouded by the ten-- eleven, maybe-- assorted liquors swimming through him at the moment, blurring the edges of his reason until everything around them is just a smear of hues around the sharp clarity of Axton working himself before him. His own hand flies to his belt instead and fumbles with the buckle, fine motor skills rendered uncharacteristically dull and clumsy under the effects of alcohol and Axton.

Axton-- who nudges a finger into himself and, as it retreats, so does the last of Zer0’s capacity for coherent thought.

The command’s already labored breaths grow even heavier as he braces his weight against the wall, his right hand reaching back to slick up the crease of his ass. Zer0 isn’t sure if something that’s so obviously mere preparation should be causing him to.. react, the way that he is, but the way that Axton bends looks like something meant only for him, like he’s offering himself up to him, and that possessive thing surges in him again, creeping up his spine. It stirs something in his abdomen, a warm, coiling pressure that only burns hotter when he leans forward and frames the swell of Axton’s ass with his fingers, spreading his buttocks further apart for a better view.

Axton moans when he does that, ducks his head down toward the grimy pillow of the cot and pants harshly, the digit he’s buried in himself sliding back in, further this time. He says something, Zer0 thinks, but whatever it is feels much less important than what’s happening right here, right now, in front of him.

He watches as Axton adds another finger, both his hand and his thighs trembling as he wills himself to relax. He watches as his cock swings heavy between his legs, smooth and human and twitching with every shallow thrust of his hand. He watches, rapt, as Axton curls in on himself, his shirt rucking up over his back and skin glowing with a slick sheen of sweat.

“Does it feel good?” he asks, genuinely curious.

Axton’s breath hitches, his whole body rocking forward with the next thrust, muscles flexing with the effort. “Yeah,” he groans out with surprising honesty, and adds another finger.

He’d liked it when Zer0 spread him open, so he does it again, squeezing gently at the muscle. Axton moans and pitches forward, panting into the cot. His fingers dig in deep, flexing once, before retreating.

“Okay,” he grunts, handing the tube backwards. Zer0 takes it with some bemusement. “Your turn. Lube up.”

He supposes Axton means for him to prep himself. Zer0 hesitates before squirting some of the lube into the palm of his glove and coating his penis with it. The way it glides through his hand without friction is an interesting sensation in itself, but Zer0 is after much bigger prospects. 

Pressing the sharp head of his dick to Axton’s entrance, Zer0 slowly pushes forward, watching it sink in. Axton squirms underneath him, growling like a skag caught in a trap, his hips hitching up and then back, hesitant like he’s trying to do anything but. Zer0 thrills at his loss of control, looking away and staring intently down at the commando as he buries his face into his elbow.

“All good down there,  _ bro?”  _ he snarks, and smirks to himself at the indignant sound that earns him as his own hips inch forward. It morphs into something sharp, sounding almost pained as Axton reaches back behind himself, hand fumbling until it finds Zer0’s waist, stilling him.

Axton breathes in, breathes out-- slowly, deliberately, trying to adjust to the no doubt unfamiliar pressure inside him. Zer0 watches his chest expand and contract, heaving with the effort, and thinks about how rabbit quick his heart must be beating beneath his ribs. He thinks about all that warm, bright blood coursing through his veins, about how good it looks flowing in a dizzy rush to his head or splattered on his lip, staining his bared, vicious teeth, and his hips stutter forward, just barely. 

“Ah,” the human rattles out, uncontrollably, and Zer0 feels his nerves spark at the sound, buzzing all the way up to the base of his neck.

“Did you hear me, commando?” he can’t help but croon. He strokes gently from the crook of Axton’s hip down the hard muscles of his thigh.

Axton  _ pants. _

“Mm-- feels weird,” he grounds out, audibly grinding his teeth, and Zer0 can see where that might be true. He can’t really wrap his head around how this must feel, particularly considering their anatomical discrepancies. Still, the commando moves, throwing his head back as he sinks slowly onto Zer0’s cock. Axton’s insides are warm, soft and tight in a way that sends Zer0 reeling-- and he can’t get enough. It feels amazing, floods him with a tingling sort of rush, almost like the high he feels right on the tail or a truly challenging kill-- and with that thought he feels his cock unsheath just a bit more, feels the ridges of it begin to swell and scrape against the human’s pliable, velvety insides.

“Oh-- oh,  _ fuck,”  _ Axton says, and his mouth hangs open on it, eyes half-lidded and gaze focused on nothing in some distant nowhere. He tugs forward, away from the invasion, but Zer0’s hooked into him like a barb and his own hips follow after. He curls around the commando, one hand traveling up the underneath the worn softness of his shirt and over his sweat-slick chest to squeeze curiously at his pectorals. Axton arches into it with a noise pained and almost broken, and Zer0 would nearly be concerned if not for the way the human’s dick bobs against his belly, hard and heavy and so full it’s dripping.

“What’s..?” Axton garbles, before seemingly giving up on words in favor of pressing back against Zer0’s dick, pulling him in deeper. Each ridge that slips further in strikes like a match against his nerves, spiking through him until he can hardly see, tempered only by the soft grunts shocked out of the man beneath him. Soon he’s buried to the hilt, and Axton’s head bends toward the cot again as he tries to catch his breath. His fingers dig harder against Zer0’s waist, and Zer0 can’t help but click in response, amused.

“Are you defeated?” he asks, finally completing his haiku.

“Oh get fucked,” Axton grinds out, and Zer0 has only a moment of smug satisfaction (where he considers reminding Axton that that seems to be  _ his  _ occupation at the moment) before the human adjusts enough to move and tilts his world on its axis. He thrusts back in without a single thought, chasing that incredible pressure. With each new ridge that slips in comes a slick, wet noise-- and then again as he slides back out.

Axton groans and shakes under him, the hand on Zer0’s waist slipping between his own thighs to take himself in hand, hard and fast and a little clumsy in a way reserved for drunken men.

“Fuck,” he hisses, and then, like a broken ECHOlog, “fuckfuckfuckfuck--”

Zer0’s eyes blur and won’t seem to refocus as he slowly builds to climax, drunk on booze and sex. He feels the head of his dick swell with cum, and when he tries to slip himself fully free of where he and Axton are joined, it  _ sticks.  _ Axton gasps and chokes on his air, harsh and grating, thumping the cot with his free fist. Zer0’s own vision bleeds white for a blistering moment.

“Oh,” he says simply, because he had liked that. He had  _ really  _ liked that.

_ “Oh?!”  _ Axton sputters, breathless. “The fuck’s with your di--  _ ah!” _

Zer0 stops that sentence in its tracks with another experimental pull at Axton’s entrance with the same thrilling results.  _ “Oh,”  _ he says again, aggressive and wild and the closest to losing his own control as he thinks he’s ever been. He thrusts in again, slowly dragging himself out and tugging when he meets resistance. He doesn’t necessarily mean to do it again, or again, or again, but he does, pushing and pulling until the taut bowstring of tension clenching his abdomen begins to fray, threatening to snap.

Axton moans helplessly under him, his hand slowly regaining its pattern where it had stilled in shock. He folds in on himself, his free arm grappling at Zer0’s like he’s got a death wish. They fall into a quick sort of rhythm, rough and searing with Zer0 driving Axton down into the questionably stained cot with every push and pull.

“Oh, shit, I’m gonna c-come,” Axton stammers, rattled and muffled by the cot’s thick polyester. Suddenly, Zer0 is stricken with the urge to see his face, to see what a man truly undone like this would look like, but the urgency building in him opts to keep the pace. “I’m-- I’m gonna--”

“Come,” Zer0 orders, bordering on breathless, and so Axton does, shuddering with it and clenching in fitful bursts around Zer0’s cock. Zer0, to his credit, doesn’t follow suit right away. He draws out as far as he can manage, pulsing with the urge, and tugs against the resistance a few more times before sparks fly across his vision as he comes, a quiet noise of shock startled out of him as he doubles over with the punch of it.

For a moment, there is nothing but the harsh, pleased panting mingled with his own rattling breath. Slowly, the world comes into focus again, the dark room around them morphing into shades and shapes instead of the deep inky void that had filled his vision as he’d peaked. He feels weak and weightless, legs trembling before they buckle and give again, and he finds himself sprawled over the floor once more, tenderly fumbling to put himself back in some sort of presentable order. He is fairly certain that Axton had garbled something out at him as he’d started to come down, too light and cotton-headed to catch before his breathing had evened out into that of a man deep in sleep. 

Finally, Zer0 thinks, letting his head fall back against the leg of the cot, lazy and sated. Finally, he’s scratched that itch, and by the time he’s slept it off and sobered up he can move on and come back to himself-- and his senses. Above him, the cot creaks, Axton snores unattractively, and Zer0 fades.


	9. Nothing Important Happened Today

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zed mourns the sanctity of his workstation. Axton is godawfully hungover and Zer0 realizes his plan hasn't worked (duh). Also included: Gaige and her Unrelenting Charisma™.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ramathorne says: hey, it's us again. we hope you're all staying safe in these trying times, and that we can cheer you up at least a little with this update. keep up the good fight 🙏
> 
> nni says: hey guys i know i don’t usually say much here and i know i don’t have a Huge platform but i wanna make it clear that just cuz we’re posting doesn’t mean we aren’t aware, concerned, or involved about what’s going on right now. stay safe, keep each other safe, help how you can if you can, and make it known that black lives matter. plus happy pride but remember none of that would be possible if it wasn’t for beautiful black trans woman marsha johnson ✌🏼

When Axton's crusty eyes crack open, the world around him is way too fluorescent bright and uncomfortably sticky. He groans, half-drunk and half-hungover, and attempts to lift his head from the unfamiliar cot. It feels like everything in his skull sloshes to the side when he does, and he drops like a brick back onto the thin pillow with a grunt. His head throbs, his ass throbs, and his limbs feel like lead. He thinks, honestly? That he is dying. It's like he's been scraped raw and hollow from the inside out.

Feeling strangely cold on his lower half, he pathetically flaps his hand backwards and discovers that his pants are pooled around his ankles. Slowly, one solitary gear starts turning in the back of his liquor-soaked brain as he takes stock of the situation.

One, he's in a mysterious bed.  
Two, his pants are around his ankles.  
Three, his ass is pounding like a goddamn bongo.

What the fuck did he _do_ last night? Or, more accurately, _who_ did he do last night?

Because Axton's hungover, not stupid. This isn't the first time he's woken up in a strange place by his lonesome. He knows the signs all too well-- no money, no pants, no memory-- there's only so many things it could be.

Still face down on the cot he attempts to locate his ECHOcomm, and comes up short. Shit. _Must have left it at Moxxi's,_ he thinks, sighing and rubbing the heels of his palms against his dry, tired eyes. Bits of the night begin flooding back to him-- Maya's grinning face, Salvador's amazing muffins, and the multitude of shots that had disappeared down all of their gullets. The brain juice in his head has to be three quarters vodka right now, at _least._

"What the hell," he grumbles, and tries to pull himself so he's at least a little vertical. His head spins violently and he drops back down, half-propped up on his elbows, blinking a bloodstain into clarity.

Bloodstain. Zed's. Sarah.

Oh god, he tried to call _Sarah._ Wait, no-- he'd succeeded in calling Sarah, _somehow,_ halfway across the galaxy and then some. Axton takes a breath, immediately regrets it, and then does some embarrassing breathing exercises in order to keep from throwing up. Squinting one eye back open he manages to check his surroundings with a little more certainty and confirms that, yes-- he is indeed in Zed's 'medical' 'facility'. There's the operating table, the morgue, and... Zer0, slumped over on the floor and unmoving. Oh.

_Oh._

Oh god.

"Christ," he whispers quietly, and holds his head in his hands. Yeah, everything is definitely starting to piece itself together now. He remembers how Zer0, the bastard, had only so much as touched his chest and stroked his neck, and Axton had _immediately_ popped a boner like a goddamn teenager. Then the guy _propositioned_ him? And Axton _agreed?_ From what he can remember he'd been pretty pissed at him for-- for a lot of reasons, actually, and he'd still let his dick do the thinking for him after getting one measly apology. Unbelievable.

If there's a silver lining to this whole situation it's probably that Zer0, thankfully, still seems to be pretty solidly passed out on the floor, so at least Axton can come to these horrifying realizations in peace. The longer he's awake, the more the night's events flash across his memory in vivid technicolor, so real he can almost feel it all over again.

_throat raw, knees digging into the cot underneath him, nails catching on the worn polyester every time Zer0 rocks into him a little deeper, a little more desperate--_

Axton fucking flushes and buries his face deeper into his palms. He's pretty sure he would scream if it wouldn't risk waking Zer0 or end in a fountain of vomit.

In slow motion, Axton sweeps his legs back over on the cot, ass and head aching with every excruciating inch. God, he needs, like, ten million showers. He's sore and sticky and he's pretty sure he's _leaking._ His feet thump onto the ground a little harder than he'd been going for, and he takes a second to adjust before he moves again.

Okay, standing. He can do this. He steels himself with a deep breath, plants a steadying hand on the edge of the cot and teeters when he stands too quick to find his sealegs. Lucky for him, there's a nice hard desk there to brace himself against. His hip knocks against the edge and his ass is quick to remind him to take it _easy._ Jesus, sitting is going to be a nightmare, how is he supposed to explain that away?

As he sluggishly pulls his pants back up from around his angles, he wonders what exactly they did last night that's left him feeling like he's split in two from the asshole up. He's not trying to brag or anything, but he can usually take it.

...And then he remembers, in almost painful detail, the sheer _size_ of it, pressing up against his insides til he'd thought they might burst—

 _—crushed into the cot, lungs burning for air with Zer0's cock so_ big _inside, scraping and pulling him apart, mercilessly slamming into that spot inside him over and over and over—_

Suddenly his mouth is very, very dry.

His head spins again and he swallows, eyes blearily focused on where Zer0 lies soundly on the floor. Part of him knows that he should try and wake him, to get them both out of here before Zed comes back and they have to face his wrath. The other part is debating how much of a dick move it would be to dip out before Zer0 comes to-- to make a clean getaway before he has to deal with either of them.

He sighs.

Dammit.

He knows, alright? He knows he can't just throw Zer0 to the dogs like that-- especially not ones with scalpels and a huge hard-on for 'ethi-flexible experimentation', but god is it tempting.

"Hey," he tries, softly, for the sake of his splitting headache. He zips his pants up, readjusting the belt, and stares apprehensively at Zer0's still form. _"Hey,"_ he tries again, as loud as he can muster, and prods at one of Zer0's legs with a steel-toed boot.

He doesn't budge.

"Oh, come on," Axton mutters under his breath. He'd figured someone with Zer0's reflexes would be a light sleeper, but maybe all that alcohol hit harder than he'd thought. He kneels down and takes a second to let his stomach settle before he even thinks of moving any further, unless he wants to paint Zer0's favorite helmet with a fresh coat of puke. After a calming second, he slowly reaches out, wraps his palm around the assassin's shoulder, and shakes it gently, trying to jostle him awake. He can't really help that his eyes sweep appreciatively down Zer0's lithe form at the same time-- he can and will admit that all seven feet of the bastard is distractingly hot.

That's when he notices it.

Zer0, usually so carefully observant, is drunk enough that it apparently slipped his mind to fix his own damn zipper before he'd passed out cold on the floor. Shamelessly, Axton is transfixed. He can't seem to tear his eyes away from the bright silver glint of the zipper there, right over a smooth patch of-- blue?

_Blue??_

That can't be right.

He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head gently, once, before peeking down again, just to check, and yeah, that's-- that's definitely. Blue. Uh, what the _fuck?_ Sure he's had a hunch that Zer0 is something other than human under that biker getup (c'mon, the dude has four fingers), but staring in the face of some pretty solid, hard-won evidence hits a little different. There's a brief moment of internal struggle where his conscience loses to his curiosity, and his hand inches toward the pants of Zer0's suit, his thumb grazing over the teeth of the zipper.

Before he can really register what's going on, that haunting ' **0** ' flashes across the void of Zer0's helmet and he's at once grabbed around the neck and flipped onto his back, pressed down against the cot with the bite of a pistol digging straight into his Dahl tattoo. It takes every ounce of willpower Axton has not to vomit all over Zer0's gloves, adrenaline mingling with the alcohol pounding at his temples, and when the hammer clicks he swallows hard, throwing his hands up in surrender.

"Jesus fuck, don't shoot-- that's how people get shot!" he wheezes, his mouth working faster than his brain. He lies there, complacently, hoping he doesn't quite radiate vibes of terror and unfortunate arousal as the assassin comes to his senses, his visor fading to stark, neutral black.

Zer0's entire aura shifts as he straightens to his full height, hastily stuffing the gun back into a holster at his hip. Axton would say that he seems back to his normal, menacing self, but he's not sure the guy's ever really been normal a day in his life. It's hard to tell if there's something… off with him, or if he's always this weirdly silent the morning after. Luckily for them, filling strange silences is one of two things Axton's mouth is pretty damn good for.

"You," he coughs, rubbing around his neck, "Your fly is open."

Zer0 looks down. His hand rushes to zip it up, and Axton thinks this may be the first time he's ever seen him almost flustered. The silence blooms awkwardly between them again as Axton gingerly removes himself from the cot a second time and wobbles to his feet once more.

He'd be lying if he said that curiosity isn't gnawing at him from the inside out. It's nothing new-- they've all been wondering what's under that suit since the minute they'd banded together, but now that he's caught a glimpse of it the need to know is eating him alive. Especially now that whatever is under there has been _inside_ him.

"What?" Zer0 asks, irritably. _Defensively,_ even, because all that Axton seems to be able to do is stare at him.

"Uh." _Nothing, really, just trying to picture you naked._ No, definitely not the way to start this conversation. He's gotta at least _try_ and be diplomatic about this. "I--"

Come on, say it. Just say it!

"What's ah." Axton starts, bracing himself. "Look, I gotta ask. Is there-- are you-- about your d--"

"--What the hell are you two still doin' here?" Zed barks, throwing open the door to the facility and waltzing right on in like he owns the place. Which he does, Axton has to remind himself with a sudden, cold wash of dismay. The 'doctor' looks about as drunk as Axton still feels but much, much more irritated. His face wrinkles up under the mask as he sniffs. "And _why_ does it smell like sex?"

Axton freezes, caught between fight or flight, watching in horror as comprehension begins to slowly dawn on their medical merchant. All the stages of grief flicker across Zed's face before settling on, uh, anger.

Yeah, that's-- that's anger.

A beat passes. Axton feels like he's stuck in a truxican standoff. He's absolutely certain a tumbleweed is about to bluster its path down the alley outside. Zed's hands clench fitfully into fists before he raises one finger and points at the both of them.

"Out," he says, with all the deathly calm of a murderous man. "Y'all get the hell out of my office, now."

"We were--" Zer0 starts, but Axton grabs him by the crook of the elbow and starts hauling him toward the exit before either of them can somehow make the situation worse.

He keeps his hand locked around Zer0's arm until they stumble their way into the relative safety of town square. They make it a collective fifty or so paces before Axton's stomach lurches dangerously, disagreeing vehemently with his being upright and all the sudden movement, and he staggers halfway onto a nearby bench, groaning softly.

"--'M gonna be fuckin' sick," he warbles.

"It _is_ after," Zer0 agrees, helpfully. Axton shoots him a look that he hopes comes across as unamused instead of just ungodly nauseous.

"Don't," he starts, and then huffs, trying to catch his breath. "Don't talk to me until I've had at least five showers and a gallon of coffee." He slowly rotates himself into a sitting position-- god his ass is _killing_ him-- planting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

Inhale. Exhale. Don't puke. Axton reaches out towards Zer0, hand beckoning. "ECHOcomm," he requests, without looking up. There's a moment of hesitation before there's a _click_ and a faint weight in his hand. Axton pulls it in, squints one eye against the bright backlit screen, and begins to type.

 **Zer0:** maya it's axton  
 **Zer0:** did i leave my echocomm at the bar

 **Maya:** YeaHHH  
 **Maya:** Where the fukc have you been, you missed soo many hands  
 **Maya:** Krieg won 50 bucks off Zed and he looked Pissed  
 **Maya:** Is Zer0 with you? Did you two finally kiss and make up

Axton almost panics, his face going red and his whole body burning like he's been dropped in a vat of ice-- until he realizes that Maya's just fucking with him. He's supremely grateful they aren't talking face to face just now.

 **Zer0:** very funny. yeah he’s here  
 **Zer0:** i passed out like an hour ago

 **Maya:** Wlel get your asses down here Gaige says she;s comign to grab lunch  
 **Maya:** hi Zer01!  
 **Maya:** Oops  
 **Maya:** You know what I mean

“Maya says hi,” he grunts distractedly, and rubs at the stubble forming on his jaw. Zer0 nods and gives a quick little wave, but otherwise says nothing in return. 

**Zer0:** he waved  
 **Zer0:** gonna puke my guts out first and then join you

 **Maya:** Poor baby had too much to drink?

Axton wrinkles his nose. He's had worse hangovers in worse places, but he's not going anywhere until he's gotten the chance to clean up. His mouth tastes like stale piss and Splodey-O's, and it feels like he's got… _stuff_ , drying in some pretty uncomfortable places.

 **Zer0:** ha ha **  
****Zer0:** eat a dick

He thumbs back to the home screen and makes to hand the comm back to Zer0. "Should prolly head back," he grumbles. God, just the _thought_ of being upright again is giving him vertigo. "Help me up, would ya?" he says, and jiggles the communicator when Zer0 doesn't take it right away.

Eventually, Zer0 grasps his wrist, pulling him up and taking back his ECHOcomm all in one smooth motion. Axton staggers and blinks stupidly at him, a little dizzy from the sudden rush and the vivid memory of all the other places those hands have been not too long ago. He clears his throat, and it hits him then that Zer0 has spoken all of six words since they woke up. It's so damn frustrating that Axton can't tell if that's his normal brand of creepy silence or something… different.

"You, ah." he scrubs his hand over the back of his neck. "Hey. Are we… good?"

He may be good at filling silences, but he has no idea what to say in this situation. He's never really known what to say to guys the morning after, mostly because the kind of guys Axton usually liked to mess around with weren't ones that were gonna stick around for long. He's really kind of royally fucked that up, tumbling onto a cot with his… whatever he and Zer0 are. Teammates? Fellow squad members? He's not sure if they're friends or not, but whatever they are they're definitely stuck with each other for the foreseeable future. Of course he wants to make sure they stay on good terms.

Zer0 tilts his head. "Good?" he echoes ominously, and takes one step forward.

Axton feels himself flush as he mirrors him, taking an unsteady step back. Zer0 crowds him by the wall of the travel station, and for a moment he can't help but remember exactly what happens whenever he's pinned against something by the assassin.

"Um," he says, mouth dry again. "Yeah?"

Instead of an actual answer, Zer0's hand comes up to graze his cheekbone, and Axton sucks in a breath, his gaze darting between his hand and his helm. The assassin makes a low noise of frustration, leaning in closer-- so close that Axton can see every scuff and microscopic scratch on Zer0's visor reflected in the dim light of Elpis. He thinks, for one wild, weird second, that Zer0's going to kiss him, helmet and all, and doesn't know how to feel about his chest seizing up at the thought.

The sex is one thing-- other than Zer0 actually _wanting_ it, there'd been no real surprise there. Zer0 is tall, hot, and murderous, and Axton is an attractive, hot-blooded twenty-something with a libido to match. He's come to terms with his thirst. A _kiss--_ especially the kind he's half expecting, slow and hushed and private-- that's something else entirely. Something he thought he'd given up once he'd turned heel, hightailed it out of the military, and left Sarah behind.

The thought feels distant, out of place, especially considering how the rest of the night-- hell, the rest of his _life--_ has gone up til now. Still, he finds himself caught up in it. His stomach drops like he's falling, his breath burns in his lungs, and he finds himself waiting, in spite of himself, to see if Zer0 will rise to the challenge and close what little space still spans between them. Instead, he just growls-- low and menacing. It still sends a dark thrill up Axton's spine, and just like that the bubble bursts and he comes back down to reality.

"It didn't work," Zer0 seethes, the hand by Axton's head balling into a fist.

Axton blinks, squinting in the moonlight. "What didn't work?" he asks, still a little dazed, and doesn't get a response. Which, you know, as cool as he would be with avoiding the issue entirely and never question it again, it's probably better for them _and_ the rest of the team if they clear the air. He licks his lips, just once, and doesn't miss how Zer0's head cants towards him, as if following the motion.

"Zee," he tries--

\--and Gaige cheers, "ZEE!" as she skids out from around the corner. "Hey, am I glad to see you-- oh?"

Axton legit jolts, crashing his temple against the curve of Zer0's helmet. His world _whirls_ and _rings,_ horribly, as he slides back and left against the rounded wall, cursing up a storm. Nausea rears its ugly head yet again and he has to bend down and breathe against his knees.

"Gaige," he pants, squinting an eye up at their mechromancer from across the street. She looks rather taken aback, one hand up and over her open mouth, eyebrows gradually climbing into the fringe of her bangs. "What's," he straightens, pulling in a fortifying breath. "What's up?"

Gaige tilts her head away from him without breaking eye contact. "Nothing much," she says. Her words come slow but Axton can see her little teenage brain working overtime, jumping headfirst into conclusions. The steam is practically spouting out of her ears. She looks to Zer0, who's drawn up to his full height, stock-straight and looking everywhere but directly at her.

"Are you guys…" she trails off. "...okay?"

"Yep," Axton affirms, a little too enthusiastically, hands still on his knees and his head bowed down towards the ground in mortification. "Yeah. Uh-huh. Everything's a-okay out here."

Zer0 flashes a smiley face, his gaze still pointed to the overhang of the travel station. Gaige's hand slowly lowers away from her mouth, and Axton doesn't like how she's starting to look more and more delighted the more she stares between them.

She locks eyes with him and excitedly mouths, _deets,_ emphasizing the word with a subtle jut of her chin towards Zer0. Axton waves her off, urgently pointing between her and Zer0, and then to the bar.

 _What about you?_ Gaige protests, in several gestures.

Axton throws his hands up in the air in a way that hopefully conveys that it's none of her business.

She pouts, but seems to get the message-- straightening herself and looking brightly towards their assassin.

"Hey, Zee," she says, wiggling the fingers on her flesh hand. "Wanna walk a girl to Moxxi's?"

Zer0 finally tilts his head toward her, the display of his helmet lighting up with a cherry red ' **?** '. But before he really has a chance to answer, Gaige has already looped his arm in her own, dragging him towards the bar. Axton is relatively certain her unrelenting charisma and Zer0's current state of confusion are the only reasons the assassin lets himself be towed along, but he isn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

He gingerly pushes himself off of the wall, wincing and staggering towards the Crimson Raider base, feeling filthy and more than a little disoriented.

Hopefully a cold shower will wake him the fuck up.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at us on [twi](http://twitter.com/r4mathorne) [tter](http://twitter.com/innibriated), sometimes we draw or post fic writing shenanigans.


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